This Little Life

30th November 2018 (Hermione is 39)

HERMIONE: I couldn't allow myself to believe that I was really going to have this baby.

I knew this was the one I would carry to term. I knew that my daughter was to come at the seventh attempt, causing her to carry the time epilepsy gene like her father, and that after my six heartbreaking miscarriages previously I would finally get the baby I had been yearning for all these years. This baby was going to stay with me until she was due to arrive and it was set in the future that Ron had seen for us. The fate we could never fight or change was now on our side and nothing could take this baby away from me.

I knew all those things but it still didn't keep me from worrying. What else could I do?

I needed to buy something to wear, none of my clothes fitting me any more, but I just couldn't convince myself to go shopping for maternity stuff or anything for the baby. I couldn't help but feel as if I would jinx it for us. Ron had been trying to decorate the spare room and turn it into a nursery for his girl. Ron and Aimez were already so close now, they had spent so much time together as Ron had travelled to her and she had travelled to him and more often than not they would both travel to the same place together and meet up.

Aimez. It's a beautiful name and I'm not supposed to know it. Ron has resolutely refused to tell anybody her name so I can 'come up with it myself' when she is born. I heard him talking in his sleep about his little girl and sometimes he talks to her. I love listening to their adventures in his subconscious. He knows how I hate to feel as if my future selves have made all my decisions for me and the Hermione of the present has no say in things whatsoever. He thinks he's overstepped the mark a bit by even confirming to me that this baby will be a girl but how could I not have already guessed that? I met her. I met my little one when I was nineteen years old and she had travelled to our street to give Ron his lost wand and get a kiss and a cuddle from her daddy because her own was in the hospital for some reason.

Her daddy was always going to be in the hospital for some reason. I was so scared that my daughter was going to have to live a similarly hazardous lifestyle.

"Come on Hermione," Percy's wife Pippa said as she dragged me into Madame Malkin's shop by force, "I know that you've got a thing about coming back in here after that first time but I promise you okay? Ron won't show up in the street dead or dying, you will not lose the baby the second you lay your hands upon a maternity robe and there's nothing wrong with Molly knitting booties for her new granddaughter."

I sighed and gave up my protestations. I looked down to the three year old Ally and her four-year-old brother Bobby and smiled at them. They call me Auntsie My-nee just to make them even cuter than they looked. It was as if Percy had the sweetness gene as well as the intelligence. Alistair looked just like Percy, the curly hair and sparsely freckled skin, while Bobby looked alarmingly like Ron used to when he was that age. It was as if my husband had been cloned really. Percy and the twins loved this fact and kept playing tricks on poor Molly involving elaborate fibs about the timelines getting tangled up and a five year old Ron travelling to the Burrow. They would present a naked Bobby to her and she wouldn't know if they were serious or not. Well at least at first. The very first time they had done it Ally hadn't been born yet and Molly spent a whole weekend looking after her little 'Ronnie' while Percy and Pippa had a romantic anniversary dinner all to themselves.

"Well what do you think then?" I asked them as Bobby wiped his runny nose on his sleeve and Ally giggled and hid his face in his mother's skirt.

"I think mummy's bossy!" Bobby beamed.

I laughed at the expression on Pippa's face.

"Y'know what Bobby? I think so too."

Bobby took my hand and pulled me over to some pretty lemon coloured robes and I looked over my shoulder and smiled a resigned smile at my sister-in-law as she picked Ally up and followed us along. Bobby was named after a bedtime story Percy had once heard Ron telling his infant self when he travelled to the Burrow one Christmas in such a foul mood that not even Fleur and her baby mojo could get him to settle. Ron had taken himself from his mother to give her a break and soon we all noticed that the crying and screaming had stopped. Percy had said that he looked in on Ron in his old bedroom and saw him pacing up and down in front of the bedroom window rocking the baby Ron in his arms and mumbling a story about a little black buck called Bobby to himself. Percy hadn't stayed around to hear the story as he didn't want to disturb the peaceful scene but something about seeing his little brother like that had really stuck with him and when his first son was born he named him Bobby.

I had seen plenty over the years to let me know that Ron was a fantastic father. I had seen him with Cam as he grew from a newborn into a handsome and admirable young man and I had watched him with all the nephews and nieces as they came into the family as well as his younger selves. He had this knack with them. Molly had once commented that Ron had an old soul and the children could pick up on that but Arthur once confided in me that Ron was gifted with the most wonderful way of seeing life and everything in it as if he was seeing it for the first time. A miracle really considering that by the time he was twenty Ron had pretty much seen it all. I knew what his dad meant though. I once caught him watching me getting dressed in the morning and he had the strangest smile on his face.

"What are you grinning at?"

"Nothing, I'm just looking at you."

"Why? I'm a mess. My hair's all over the place and I'm getting over the flu, I'm a state."

"You're never a state. You're just a new kind of beautiful every day and I like seeing it happen that's all."

A new kind of beautiful, he really meant it too. Every day he would look at me as if he was seeing me for the first time. I picked up little Bobby and carried him over to the mirror to see how I looked holding a young Weasley. Bobby waved at his reflection before sticking out his tongue and chuckling with that oh-so-Ron-like laugh of his.

"Auntsie My-nee?" he said as he looked at my reflection with his wide blue eyes.

"What is it Bobby?" I smiled.

"I'm glad you and Uncle Ron are getting your baby now."

I felt a lump in my throat and I nodded at him and gave him a hug.

"So am I," was about all I could manage in response.

23rd February 2019 (Ron is 38 and Hermione is 39)

RON: I rub small circles at the base of Hermione'sspine with my fingertips and she moans as the back pain is finally lessenes just a little bit. She's really big now and still working full time at the lab. When I'm done with her back I'm moving on to her feet. She stands up all day and comes home almost in tears because of all her aches and her hormones. She won't take maternity leave until the very last minute though. It's her independent streak I think.

"Can we stay right here, 'till the end of time, 'till the earth stops turning?" I'm singing to the baby nowadays.

Hermione is obsessed with talking to her bump and I always felt weird about it but one morning last month she woke up to find me resting my head lightly upon her bump and humming to it. She told me that if I sang to the baby she would never tell the twins or Harry and Ginny on me.

"Gonna love you 'till the seas run dry. I've found the one I've waited for."

I never forgot the grief Percy got for his singing in the shower of a morning. Weasley men don't sing. It's an unwritten law. We don't sing, not because we can't, but because we come from a long line of piss takers who will destroy us if we show our soft side. Even Hermione didn't know I could sing until she made me sing to her stomach. I think she's lying about it soothing the baby and easing her discomfort just to get me to do it while she's awake to hear it.

"All this time I've loved you and never known your face. All this time I've missed you and searched this human race."

She sighs and I move down to begin massaging her right foot.

"Here is true peace. Here my heart knows calm."

Aimez always makes me sing this to her. Hermione even names our future retirement home by the sea after it. Funnily enough I learned the song from Hermione, though she says that she heard it first from me, I think this song is one of our time loops that has no beginning and no end. I kind of like it that way.

"Safe in your soul, bathed in your sighs. Could we stay right here 'till the end of time, 'till the earth stops turning? Wanna love you 'till the seas run dry. I've found the one I've waited for."

"What's it called again?" Hermione groans as I manipulate her foot with firm strokes that cause her to close her eyes and relax for the first time since she got back home.

"It's called Gorecki, I keep telling you," I mumble as I lower her right foot and set about easing the left.

"Gorecki," she sighs to herself, "Oh yeah."

I see that Hermione's ankles have swollen again and resolve to hide all her shoes once she's gone to sleep so she won't be able to go to work tomorrow. Knowing Hermione she'd go in barefoot. I hum the tune to myself as I massage the ball of her left foot with my thumb and hear her sigh again.

"We don't name the baby Gorecki do we?" she murmurs.

I laugh at this, she's always fishing for the name of the baby but I know she just wants to refuse to call her what she's destined to be called just to defy time. Hermione's determined to defy time. She thinks that if she can prove fate wrong just once then my time jumps will stop for good, some kind of space time relativity whatchamacallit that she rambled on about with Percy over dinner a year or so ago. If I say I saw a green cow in Diagon Alley on the twenty second of July 2016 then she reckons that by keeping me from ever seeing said green cow in that location on that day then time has been changed and the jumps are null and void and have to stop.

I don't follow that logic myself, there was a half hour explanation she gave and Percy was fascinated but all I heard was 'blah blah blah continuum'. Although Percy was interested in Hermione's theory he didn't buy it at all. He was saying something about proving time wrong while I was in the wrong time leading me to be erased from it completely. Hermione told him he was about as wrong as he could be and I got up to go for a walk with a confused looking Charlie who had never been able to get his head around the simplest concepts of my time travel let alone all this intelligent stuff between the two boffins.

I don't want her to know the baby's name just so she can change it and stick two fingers up in time's face. I like the name Aimez, it suits my girl, it's beautiful and so is she. Besides I think it's got to be Hermione's choice of name anyway because I would never be able to come up with something as perfect and original as that.

"Ron?" Hermione sighed with contentment as I snapped out of my own daydream state and set her foot back down.

"Mmm?"

"Why does she never travel back to see me?"

I wondered if I had just zoned out of a conversation and moved closer to meet Hermione's eyes.

"I'm not following you."

"Our daughter," Hermione said with a sad smile as she stroked my hair, "you see her all the time don't you? She comes to you everywhere at every age and you already know all about her. I was just wondering why she never came to me. You come to me more than you come to anybody else. I see more of you than you do yourself."

I laughed, that was a very strange thing for her to say, strange but true. I had spent more time with Hermione than I ever had done with my past and future selves while travelling. I didn't know why. I didn't know how any of this worked.

"Well I think it might be because I'm gone a lot in her future," I said as I cleared my throat, I hoped Hermione didn't want to go into the whole post 2024 debate again, "Whenever I see her she seems to have been pining for me or something. I think she seeks me out."

"Like you're her gravity?" Hermione smiled.

"Something like that I guess."

I lean over her and kiss her on the lips before getting up to go and make her something to eat that satisfies both her cravings and my need not to be sick. Hermione has this weird thing for strawberries covered in vinegar at the moment. At least the eating yeast extract right out of the jar phase has ended.

"Ron?" she called after me.

"Yup?" I smile as I spin around at the kitchen door and walk back over to her to see what she needs now.

She reaches up for me and pulls me down for a proper kiss. Her fingers snake into my hair and I try to remember that she's six months pregnant and not to lie on top of her like I usually do. As we part again she is smiling up at me and brushing her soft hand against my face.

"I love you."

I blinked and shook my head.

"Tell me something I don't know."

She laughs and slaps me on the arm and I give her a quick peck on the cheek before heading back to the kitchen.

10th April 2019 (Ron is 39, Hermione is 39)

HERMIONE: I'm being lied to in order to protect me in my vulnerable state and I don't like it one little bit.

Harry's told me that Ron is travelling. Ron's been gone for five days now and none of the family will leave me alone for a second. Reassuring me that he'll be back soon and trying to keep me company until he is. Fred and George are constantly trying to amuse me and Percy is acting like my father with the level of bossiness in the name of keeping me relaxed. Ginny keeps changing the subject to baby stuff whenever I confide with her that I can tell they are all keeping something from me.

I even flooed St Mungo's and demanded to speak to Ben after convincing myself that Ron had been hurt by that bastard Seamus and it was being kept from me to protect the baby from my worry.

Worrying isn't something caused by news of Ron, it is caused by there being no news of Ron whatsoever. I went to the Burrow in the guise of needing to talk to Molly about remedies for my swollen ankles and surreptitiously glanced at the family clock. Ron's hand wasn't on 'time-travelling', the hand Arthur had attached some years back, and it wasn't on 'hospital' so Ben hadn't been lying to me. It was swinging violently between 'lost' and 'in mortal peril'.

I maintained my ruse and sat chatting to Molly about breast-feeding for an hour before telling her I was tired and wanted to go back to the Hornet's Nest. Nobody knew that I now knew the truth. Ron wasn't travelling at all. Ron was missing. Six months pregnant or not I was going to find my bloody husband and hex the living crap out of whomever it was who had taken him away from me.

RON: I think it's been five days. I'm not sure. He knows he can't kill me. Time doesn't let him kill me, I've seen it and there's nothing he can do to change that. He can try but all he'll do is hurt me bad enough to hospitalise me for a couple of months. He's learnt that lesson now.

I know how he's doing it of course. I heard about my drugging in France. I can't travel if I'm doped up enough, not unless time dictates that a seizure is due, and I haven't been able to induce one since he got me here. It's the water and the food but I stopped eating and drinking two days ago and I've got a clearer head now. Well as clear as a head can get when you've starved yourself for two days in between beatings and curses.

The door to the abandoned medieval dungeon creaks open. I hate that creak, I know that creak so well, and it can only mean one thing.

"Plaga pulpa!" Seamus yells and a flash hits me and throws me against the stone wall like ten invisible punches to the chest.

All the air leaves me and I slide down the wall of the dungeon coughing and gasping while his footsteps break into a run and he swings a kick into the side of my face. I feel one of my molars loosen and my ear begins to ring.

"What no fight back this time Weasley?" Seamus said as he swung another kick into my stomach, "No funny little comment or pathetic attempt to apologise for what you did to Lavender?"

I try to stand but he punches me on the other side of my face and I see nothing for a moment and hear a high whistle inside my head. When I come back to myself I can't open my eye and am sprawled out on the floor on my back. I've given up trying to reason with him. There's no reason left there now. He's not the same person I knew and when he comes in to vent all the years of pain he thinks I've caused he's detached from the whole thing entirely. It's as if he's following a set routine he planned outside the dungeon. He doesn't even seem to enjoy exacting his revenge. He just has to do it.

"Answer me!" he yelled as he drew his wand and hit me with another curse, "Obtineo doleo!"

Something held me in place, like a body bind only agonisingly painful, and I tried to let myself black out rather than scream. I held my breath and hoped it would be quick.

"Not that little trick again," Seamus said as he kicked me in the gut again, making me cough and gasp for air, "I want you to feel this. I want you to feel what I feel you bastard."

It was as if dull rusty needles were dragging al over my skin and tearing the flesh open while my insides twisted and pushed against my bones. He wasn't going to let me pass out until he was done. I gritted my teeth and let out a growl as the curse finally lifted and I was a sweating, panting mess on the floor at his feet. My whole body was trembling and I couldn't even lift my hand to wipe the blood from my face.

Seamus put his wand away to haul me up and drag me into an iron chair in the corner. He dumped me into it and took out his wand again to summon the drugged water from the corner of the dungeon. It flew into his hand and just as I was opening my mouth to protest he poured the liquid down my throat and clamped his hand over my mouth so I couldn't spit it back out. Then he remembered my little trick the last time and pinched my nose too. I fought it for a few seconds until my body convulsed and I swallowed.

Seamus smiled and flicked his wand at me as he stepped back from the chair.

"Captivas!"

Rusty ropes of iron secured me to the chair by my wrists and ankles as I felt the mood stabiliser hitting me and my head fell forward. Seamus lifted my chin and forced me to look at him with my good eye.

"I may not be able to kill you Weasley but I can have a hell of a good time waiting for your forty fourth birthday to come around."

He held my head in position as he aimed his punch. The last thing I remember is the taste of blood in my mouth.

HERMIONE: I had performed a locator spell on my wedding ring. My ring and Ron's were both made from the same nugget of gold and forged by a goblin craftsman to be magically linked for all eternity. It had seemed like a romantic thing at the time but now I knew that the magical link would help me find Ron in a way the team of Aurors would never have been able to.

I had apparated to Angmering and seen a shimmering cloak of magical power somewhere along the coastline, a faltering concealment charm that made me confident that this was where I would find Ron.

Why would I do this alone? Why would I risk my unborn child and my husband's life in keeping my discovery of Ron's location to myself rather then telling Harry or Eldridge and Langley? Why was I about to face Seamus Finnegan all on my own?

I was doing it because I am sick and tired of that pathetic little man taking his rejection out on my family. I am sick of watching Ron recovering in hospital beds. I am sick of hearing about Harry and his friends being attacked by Death Eaters because Seamus has sold out their positions simply because the whole department have to pay for him not being loved the way he wanted to be when he was nineteen years old.

This was a grown man and not a nineteen-year-old boy.

This was a grown man who was messing with my husband and keeping him from me when I want him at my side singing to my stomach and massaging my back.

This was a grown man I had had just about enough of and I was going to kick his arse, pregnant or not.

I was a Weasley mother now and we don't let anybody hurt our family.

"Absisto!" I screamed as I blew the concealment charm away and the door to what looked like an underground dungeon that had fallen onto the beach with the coastal erosion over the centuries.

I flicked my wand at myself and conjured a bubble shield around me as I walked into the dungeon and aimed my wand at the familiar but hollowed out face of Seamus Finnegan.

"Contineo!" I yelled as I threw a containment spell at him but he dove to one side and tried to hit me with a restrainment hex but it bounced off my shield, "Compescor!"

I hit him that time and he was thrust into the wall and held there by an invisible force. I knew that Ron was in the room but I couldn't hear him. That meant he was hurt and I felt my rage at this swelling up inside of me. I didn't tear my eyes from Seamus though. I could look for Ron when I was done with him.

"You'd better prey that you've not done too much damage Seamus," I said with simmering anger rising to the surface, "because I'm in no mood to be gentle with you right now."

The spell on him wore off and he lifted his wand and sent a spell at me that shattered the bubble shield.

"Perfringo!" he roared triumphantly and the shield fell away from me as I aimed my wand at his chest and we began to circle each other like animals about to attack, "I don't want to have to hurt you Hermione, not in your state, but don't think that I won't do it."

"The only state you have to worry about is the one I'm going to leave you in. Everbero indentiem!"

A series of brutal blows struck Seamus and I threw up another shield before me as he aimed his counter-attacks erratically as he struggled to shake of the magical beating I was giving him.

"Oppugno!" he yelled and the blows ceased and my new shield evaporated, "Impedio!"

Strands of fine wire-like thread shot forth from Seamus' wand and began to entangle their way around my body. I had just enough movement in my arm to flick my wand at the bindings and free myself.

"Epedio!" the strands of magical wire crumbled into rust and I aimed my wand at Seamus with my barely contained fury, "Adficto!"

"Protego!" Seamus defended against my attack while running across the dungeon into a corner.

I followed him with my wand while shooting attack spells at him the whole time. Every one of them bounced off his shield until I eventually penetrated it and Seamus' eyes flashed with what he appeared to think was his winning move in this battle and he stepped behind an ugly metal chair and aimed his wand at me from his perfect cover from attack. Ron.

I tried not to look at my husband as he sat slumped in the iron chair, bound by metal ropes that cut into his bruised flesh, and glared at Seamus' smug face instead.

"Not so sure of your aim now are you Hermione?" he said as one hand reached around the back of the chair to grab a handful of Ron's hair and pull his head up to reveal an almost unrecognisable face, swollen and bloody, while his wand hand moved around the other side and pointed into Ron's throat, "Want to hear him scream do ya?"

I gripped my wand and maintained my aim. I wasn't shaking, I wasn't flinching, and I wasn't going to back down.

"Get your hands off of him," I snarled.

"Five days I've been working him over and he still won't scream for me but I'm sure that when he sees you here with me he'll change his tune, let's see shall we?"

"Servo! Solvo!" I bellowed as I aimed right for Ron's chest.

The protection spell hit a fraction of a second before the release spell and Seamus flinched as the bindings loosened slightly and his grip on Ron's hair was gone as his fingers were prized open.

"Crucio!" Seamus yelled as he pointed his wand at Ron's limp body but my protection spell seemed to have interfered with his aim enough to send the spell bouncing off the wall and sending debris crashing down between us.

We were both a little concerned about this but kept our wands on each other all the same.

"He's dead anyway soon enough, you do know that right?" Seamus spat as he backed away into the darkness of the dust cloud and away from Ron.

"I know as much as you do and that's not a lot," I said with determination, "and I'm pretty sure I'm understanding how to beat time at its own game actually. The future is mine to control and my husband is in my future for a very long time."

I suddenly heard Ron's voice in my head from all those years ago.

"I never leave you...I've seen it."

"Denial won't keep your man alive y'know?" Seamus's voice said from the dust cloud as it began to settle.

I was about to reply when I heard multiple cracks outside and wondered if Seamus was expecting anyone. From the look on his face he wasn't and he did his old favourite escape routine and summoned a portkey into his waiting hand, transporting him to where ever that cruel little man was hiding these days.

I watched him go before running, as fast as my pregnancy would allow me, to Ron. I heard voices and running footsteps but I didn't tear my attention away from fighting to free Ron from the rusty ropes that I hadn't managed to loosen enough with my spell.

"Hermione, Godric it's true!" Harry said fearfully as he led the Aurors into the dungeon and ran to join me, "I didn't believe it when Percy told me what he thought you'd done, he found the stuff you used to trace Ron," as Harry spoke Ron's name he looked up at his unconscious friend and seemed both outraged and terrified as he lifted his head and saw the state of his face, "and he came to me and said he thought you'd gone to take on Seamus yourself but I...I never thought..."

"Out of the way," Cavendish said as he stormed over and gripped Ron's bonds and pulled at them with his powerful fingers.

"It's really strong magic Lee, I can't do anything more than loosen them," I said as I watched him pulling even harder while Harry simply gaped at him.

"I know that," he said through gritted teeth, "that's why I'm not using a wand Mrs Weasley."

As he spoke my name the metal rope came free from the chair and Cavendish seemed to shake with the sense of victory as he moved over to Ron's other wrist.

"I'll get his healer here," Auror Davis called as she turned and ran out of the cave to disapparate.

I started treating as many of Ron's injuries as I was able to while Cavendish miraculously broke through the second of the iron ropes and cracked his knuckles before dropping to his knees to free Ron's legs.

"Godric what did that bastard do to him Hermione?" Harry shuddered as he set about healing Ron's bloodied face.

"It sounds like whatever he was trying to do he couldn't do it," I said as I remembered Seamus' claim that Ron wouldn't scream for him.

Just as Ben was being led into the dungeon by Davis Cavendish broke another binding and almost growled with a feral pride. I wondered if Cavendish was part giant like Hagrid before moving aside to let Ben get to work on Ron while Harry helped me up and guided me away to check me out for any signs of injury.

"I'm fine Harry I swear, he never had a chance to hit me with anything," I informed him.

"Oh don't I believe it," Harry had said in awe, "I've seen your Ron induced rage when you went all canary mad and that was against somebody you loved so I don't dare imagine what you did to Seamus for hurting him."

It was as Harry said those words that I realised what had just happened. Ron had been captured and tortured for five days and I had just fought an unstable would-be-murderer while heavily pregnant with our child. I could have lost everything. I watched as Cavendish freed Ron completely and lifted him out of the chair at Ben's instruction.

"We've got to get him back to St Mungo's right now," the healer was saying.

I don't know what came over me, I was shaking now as Harry took my hand to guide me after the departing Cavendish, and Harry let out an amazed sigh and shook his head.

"I always said it was dangerous to incur the wrath of a Weasley woman."

RON: My throat was so dry that even breathing hurt. I tried to swallow but all I achieved was an unpleasant wheezing noise.

"Ron?" I heard her before I felt her hand on my face and opened my eyes a crack to look at her concerned face.

I tried to swallow again so I would be able to say something to her but my whole mouth was dry and I felt as if my tongue was stuck to my teeth. I managed to make a raw squeaking sound and then I saw movement at my other side and Ben was lowering a cup to my lips and letting a very small trickle of water fall into my mouth.

"Hey there," he smiled as I managed to swallow for real this time, "Nice to have you back."

I looked back at Hermione and felt my saliva glands coming back to life and moistening my mouth so I could speak again.

"You ok?" I whispered hoarsely.

"I'm fine," she smiled and stroked my hair softly, "how do you feel?"

"Dented."

I heard Ben laugh at this and he mumbled something to Hermione about getting me to drink some more before he went outside to face my family. Hermione put the cup to my lips and let me take a little water again before leaning forward and kissing me softly.

"You're going to have to stay here for a week or two Ben tells me," she said with a sad smile, I lifted my heavy arm and took her hand while she continued, "who's going to sing to my stomach every night?"

"Maybe I'll come and visit you from the future," I said before my eyes felt heavy again.

She smiled and lay her head beside mine as I drifted off to sleep while wondering how the Aurors managed to find me and get me out of there.

1st May 2019 (Ron is 39, Hermione is 39)

HERMIONE: I lie in bed and watch Ron toss and turn for a moment before drawing his knees up to his chest and shuddering. The flinching has lessened every day since he came home from St Mungo's but now he's getting restless and jerking away from whatever curses or punches Seamus is giving him in his nightmares. He only came off the dreamless sleep potion two nights ago and now I am woken in the morning by the sound of him suddenly gasping and yelping in his sleep. Ben tells me it should pass soon enough. I hope so.

I wriggle to one side of the bed to try and haul myself out of it but pause at the sound of Ron's rapid breathing while he scrunches up his face and decide that enough is enough.

"Evvervate!" I say as I swish my wand at him and his eyes open wide with shock.

I smile down at him reassuringly as he sits up in bed panting heavily. I rub his back and shush him before he starts apologising for waking me up again.

"I thought you wanted to go for a run before work that's all," I lied, "and if you want to go more than one lap of the park then you'd better get going soon."

Ron nodded and blew air out as if he was sending all his anxiety out with that one exhalation.

"Yeah I do, thanks babe, I'll get ready now."

RON: I only realised I was on my fifth lap of the park when the cramp hit me and I forced myself to take a break against a birch tree. I think I'm trying to run out all my frustration over those five days of inactivity. Well if you can call being a human punching bag inactivity I suppose.

The mood suppressants have all left my system and now I'm off the dreamless sleep potion too so I think I'm trying to detoxify or something. I drank my usual bucket sized jug of water before I came out and now I think I've run it all out of me because I'm thirsty again. I begin to stretch out my legs so they don't seize up on me completely and another runner who I see every morning passes by as mimes the words 'are you okay?' and I nod and they wave to me before going on their way.

It's funny how the regulars always notice when I've been away. It's as if something's out of whack with the universe if they don't pass me first thing in the morning. They sometimes get a little confused when they see me running with myself but they probably just think I've got an identical twin or something. The runner who just passed me once got chatting while we warmed down at the gates and suggested I run something called the London Marathon but I hear it's televised and can't risk having a seizure on national television, it would be a hard one to explain! I shake out my arms and legs and set off at a very gentle trot back to the flat.

"I really needed that," I panted as I swung the front door closed behind me and undressed all the way over to the shower, leaving my trainers and clothing strewn along the floor behind me as I went, "I'll pick it up when I come out babe. Don't you go bending over alright?"

I didn't hear anything in response but I had just set the shower running. I stood under the icy cold water and let it cool me down. It may have only been the first day of May but it was warm out and I was baking. I began to wash away all the sweaty grime I had created and thought about what might have happened if Hermione hadn't come for me. Then I wondered what could have happened to Hermione if she hadn't been so focused and on the ball with rage at Seamus. I shivered and not just because of the cold water that was streaming down my back.

Harry kept muttering over and over when I was recovering in hospital that he never knew she had it in her. He knew she was vengeful when pushed and he knew she was a force to be reckoned with as far as defending loved ones went but he never realised just how focused she could be to hurt another human being. My mother said that it was like a bird protecting her nest or something. I knew what she meant; I'd seen a blackbird stand its ground against a cat in one of the trees behind the Burrow when I was little. The bird wouldn't leave her hatchlings to save her own skin. I had started pelting stones at the cat but it killed the brave mother bird and Ginny had seen me, apparently persecuting a defenceless cat and thrown a rock at the back of my head. When I told her what I'd been doing she was so upset that she climbed the tree and took the nest of hatchlings down to mother them herself.

They all died anyway.

That's the thing with a mother's love it sometimes isn't enough. Harry's mother had saved him but only by taking herself out of his life forever. Hermione had faced an unstable would-be murderer and come away without a single scratch on her. I sometimes think she's blessed. Then other times I think she's cursed. I think I've cursed her.

I step out of the shower and wrap a towel around me to go into the kitchen where I drink the entire contents of the milk bottle that is set upon the kitchen counter in one gulp. Then I open the fridge and pull out another bottle of ice-cold milk and down that too. I don't know what's got into me since I got out of hospital I really don't. It's as if I can do everything faster harder and without even thinking about it. Ben reckons it's because I've got better at zoning out outside influences and channelling all my internal crap into physical energy. He tells me he thinks that's what I was doing during those five days. He thinks that's why I was able to hold on for so long.

I put the empty milk bottle beside the first and realised that I still haven't seen Hermione. I wonder if she went back to bed once I had gone. I look in the bedroom for her but she's not around. I call out her name and nothing. I suddenly begin to panic. Where the hell did she go? She didn't go out in the park to look for me did she?

I pull back the curtain to scan the park for a very pregnant woman when the fireplace bursts with green flames and Bill stumbles out of it.

"Bill I can't find..." I begin but he's grinning at me.

"I get to return that favour you did me back when Cam was born," he beamed, "and oh yeah, what was it you said to me then? That's it, where the bloody hell have you been ya tosser your wife's popping a sprog!"

"What?" I said as I suddenly felt all the blood drain out of my face.

"She went into labour during your second lap of the park and she was waving to you like mad but you were in a world of your own so she flooed to St Mungo's and sent out word for the rest of us to find you in the park. We looked around your whole route and you weren't there."

I was under that bloody tree dealing with my cramp!

"Oh shit she's gonna kill me," I said as I ran and pulled on my stinky running gear from the floor.

"She will if you show up smelling like that," Bill reeled away from me and fanned his face with his hand, "childbirth takes a while Ron, I think she'll allow you an extra two minutes to put something on that isn't quite so toxic."

I ran into the bedroom and started to dress while a pounding on the front door turned out to be Harry who was wheezing and telling Bill that he couldn't find me anywhere.

I had my t-shirt on back to front and inside out and was barely into my jeans when I hopped out of the bedroom to let him know I was on my way when I tripped over my discarded trainer and landed with a thump on the living room floor. Bill found this quite amusing.

"I have never," Harry grumbled as he pulled me up to my feet and began dragging me over to the fireplace, "ever," he tossed a handful of powder into the flames, "known anybody quite so accident prone as you!"

He shoved me in and yelled the appropriate fireplace I needed to get to Hermione in St Mungo's and I was swallowed up in the flames, seeing Bill's amused shake of the head and Harry's rolling eyes before they zoomed away from me.

I was about to meet Aimez for the very first time.

HERMIONE: I have never felt so tired in all my life. I glance over at Ron as he gets his broken fingers healed by a medi witch and he smiled over at me and shakes his head. I didn't mean to break them; I only wanted to hold his hand that was all.

I look down at Aimez and feel the most incredible warm head rush and wonder if babies are supposed to know you the second they see you. The first moment she was placed upon my chest and she opened those big brown eyes she looked at me and seemed to recognise me immediately. She knows me just as well as Ron knows that little time traveller in the future. I don't need time epilepsy to have a pre-conceived bond with my daughter, it's already there, we know each other and we love each other and I've never felt so happy in my whole life.

"So Mrs Weasley," the mid witch smiled at me as Ron returned to my side, flexing his newly healed fingers, "do we have a name for the new arrival yet?"

I looked at Ron and he just grinned and folded his arms across his chest. He wasn't going to tell me her name. He didn't need to tell me her name; I already knew it just like I already knew her.

"Aimez," I smiled and Ron beamed, "her names is Aimez."

The mid witch smiled and peered over at the tiny little red head.

"What a beautiful name."

Ron nodded.

"It's French for cherish y'know?" he said while winking at me.

"Oh lovely, well I'll tell your families, they're all anxious to know about her."

The mid witch left the three of us alone and I reached out and took Ron's hand. He pretended to be frightened of me hurting him again but I just pulled him towards me and leaned in to kiss him.

"Who really named her?" I asked him with a smile.

He shrugged at me and looked down at his daughter.

"I think she named herself."

A/N Okay, I have a question.

Do we like arse-kicking six months pregnant Hermione or do we like arse-kicking six months pregnant Hermione?

Well what would you do if someone took away your personal masseuse when your back was aching?