A/N: Running with Hermione's POV to kick-off this chapter but it won't be all Hermione like the last one. We'll see some events through Harry's eyes this time as well! (Warning though, this chapter has some solid angst for Harry. Hinny shippers beware...)
Tuesday, May 2, 2000
Hermione didn't feel different, but she was. She was no longer a virgin. And she was not-a-virgin in any sense of the term (rather than just technically not-a-virgin thanks to Ron's ghost penis and wandering hands). In fact, she was not-a-virgin several times over. Hermione blushed, despite being alone in her office with no one to read her mind, as she recalled how she'd thoroughly debauched herself (she cast an extra locking spell on her door just in case). She and Marc had spent four days of enjoying each other's company on their Brighton holiday, and another two days together this recent Saturday and Sunday at her apartment. They hadn't gone outside much.
It had been surprisingly wonderful. Of course, there was some initial fear. Marc had needed to coax her into relaxing before he'd been able to... fit... (Hermione was certain that all of her blood was in her face and slumped beneath her desk). But after she finally did relax, and the pain subsided, she'd found sex to be rather pleasant. She hadn't come, despite Marc really trying his best, but Marc seemed to have a good time and his desire for her and sexual forwardness gave her a swooping sensation low in her abdomen that she loved.
Arousal in and of itself felt like a miracle. For a long time after Ron, she'd felt betrayed by her body as it reacted to his ministrations while she feigned sleep, and she'd resisted the carnal side of her nature in any form ever since. Now, it felt like the delicate wings of her newborn sexuality were fluttering in her hand. It was precious to her and she wanted it to grow and be whole again.
Clambering back above sea level as her embarrassment passed, she straightened her spine and tried to return her thoughts to her dwindling prospects for HELP Act sponsors. She'd sorted her list of Sacred Twenty-Eight members of the Wizengamot into three columns: Maybe, Declined, and Danger! Do Not Approach. The latter two categories were the distressing majority.
Hermione had been quite busy over the last week working to turn a Maybe into a Yes. First, she'd had afternoon tea with Gwendoline Avery and Solange Selwyn, both as charming as Draco had claimed they would be, but dumber than a puddle of algae and twice as shallow. She wasn't certain either of them had even grasped that she was seeking sponsorship. Her explanation of the legislation was met with a cheerful "that's nice" before they continued describing their Italian shoe collections.
Her next stop had been Mashall Fawley, a half-blood man with a long record of civil rights advocacy. Imagine Hermione's disappointment when she discovered that he was now pushing a hundred and fifty years old and not aging well. He seemed completely deaf (despite his obnoxiously large brass ear trumpet) and possibly senile as he wasted her time telling random "back in my day" stories with plot lines that sounded suspiciously similar to a radio show that she'd heard Arthur Weasley occassionally tune into. Needless to say, she hadn't been successful here either.
Then there was Aariz Shafiq, another half-blood with an enticingly liberal political history regarding blood relations and creature rights, but with appalling views towards women as it turned out. He'd flat out refused to meet her unless she brought a "male chaperone" and inquired about the status of her menstrual cycle as well to "determine whether a meeting between them would be derailed by hysteria". What an ignorant pig.
She had also sent meeting requests to Wilfred Bulstrode and Barnaby Greengrass, but so far had been ignored, which Hermione almost considered a blessing considering her other experiences. And seeing as she still wasn't convinced of Slughorn's trustworthiness, that meant there were only two more names on the Maybe list: Marcus Flint and Charlotte Rosier.
Regarding Madame Rosier, she was frankly hesitant to meet with someone who Malfoy had described as a "cunt" considering his own surly disposition. Someone would need to be particularly loathsome to be in a room with him and be deemed the more offensive.
That left Flint. She didn't know much about him other than that he'd been the captain of the Slytherin quidditch team, but she hadn't paid much attention to quidditch and he was a few years her senior so they didn't share any classes. Wracking her memory, she remembered hearing Harry complain about his unsportsmanlike behavior on the pitch, but that didn't mean he was evil any more than his status as a Slytherin. Harry was guilty of becoming slightly over zealous about the sport too, and even Hermione had bent the rules on occasion to help the Gryffindor team (she'd checked and the water repelling charm she'd often put on Harry's glasses was disallowed).
Maybe she should ask Malfoy if Flint was dangerous... but he was currently giving her the cold shoulder for not listening to him about Marc. She wasn't sure who had blabbed to him about her going through with giving her virginity to Marc, but it could only have been Pansy or Theo so she wasn't speaking to either of them at the moment, nixing them as options for Flint recon as well. Plus, she was running out of time. The Wizengamot would only meet once more at the end of May before their three-month summer recess. It was truly absurd, but if she couldn't get on the agenda for this next meeting there would be nothing she could do to advance elf rights until September.
She was going to have to take a gamble. Taking a deep breath and snatching up her quill, Hermione steeled her resolve. She had a letter to write.
"Are you still giving me the silent treatment?" Harry had just arrived home from work to find Ginny sitting on the couch in his living room. It should be their living room, but Ginny had refused to move in with him after they'd graduated, claiming her family needed her at home. At the time, he hadn't begrudged her the independence. He dropped by the Burrow whenever he could and wanted to be there for his surrogate family too, but now... well, now it was another pebble on the pile of problems they'd seemed to have accumulated over the last two years.
Ginny shook her head and turned to face him, watching as he cast a scourgify charm to remove the floo soot from his traveling cloak and hung it in the closet. She was crying. He hated seeing her cry and immediately joined her on the couch, wrapping her in his arms and rocking her back and forth.
"Why did you bring Teddy over last week?" her voice was slightly muffled with her face tucked in his shoulder, but he could still hear her exhaustion.
"I told you, I thought it'd be nice to give Tonks a break after the party."
"Liar. Tell me the real reason!" Ginny shoved him off of her with surprising strength to look him in the eyes.
"I..." Harry hesitated and plucked at the fuzz peeking out from a rip in the couch cushion. The truth would lead to another fight, he suspected. That's all they seemed to do these days. First, it had been just about Ginny moving in, then they'd argued over money (Harry wanted to add her name to his vault, Ginny wanted to keep their finances separate), then marriage (again, Harry for, Ginny against), and most recently they bickered about Ginny's travel schedule with the Kestrals.
At first, Harry had thought their fighting was just due to stress. They'd been through so much together: a war, losing Fred, losing Remus, Ron... he'd thought that with time, Ginny would come around to his way of thinking about the life he wanted to build with her. He was beginning to have doubts though, or maybe she was.
"You what?" Ginny prodded when he took too long to answer. "What were you hoping to accomplish? I know the Sorting Hat almost put you in Slytherin, but you're rubbish at being sneaky and conniving, so out with it!"
"I want kids," Harry blurted out against his better judgment. "Ideally, soon. And I just thought..." he swallowed, "I thought if you saw how great Teddy is, you'd want them too."
"I just got an offer to play for the Holyhead Harpies." Ginny's confession fell between them like a lead weight.
"Oh."
"Oh? Not 'congratulations, Ginny'? Not 'this is a dream come true for you'? Because it is! I'll finally get play time! I'm sick of being on the bench. I want to do something with my life!"
"Being a mother would be doing something with your life!" Harry shot back with vigor. He didn't understand where their wires were getting crossed.
"Sure, someday! Maybe... I'm 18, Harry! I know your parents settled down right after they graduated, but do we really have to do the same?"
"Is that what you think I'm trying to do? Recreate my parents' lives?"
"I don't know. You tell me! Everyone always says you look just like your father, and I have red hair like your mother. Am I just a prop in this family play?"
"No! Ginny, that's sick. I love you! You could be blonde, brunette, or bald it wouldn't matter to me!"
Ginny swiped her palms angrily across her cheeks to clear away the tear tracks, but they kept flowing. "Okay, that's not what I wanted to talk about, I'm sorry."
"Seriously, gross... I don't have some kind of Oedipus complex."
"What's that?" Oh right, purebloods don't know about Freud.
Harry sighed. "Nothing important, nevermind. What did you want to talk about then? You want to wait a few years before we have kids? I can be patient so you can play for the Harpies for a while."
"Not just a few years. I want a real career."
"Okay... how many years then?"
"I don't know! Maybe I don't want to have a plan! Can't we just wait and see?"
Normally, Harry wasn't a planner. In school, he'd relied on Hermione's organization and general bossiness to keep him on track and during the war he'd followed his gut more often than his brain. But for this... the mere suggestion of leaving the question of when and whether to build a family to chance made his heart race and his palms sweat.
He wanted a family more than anything else in the world. He loved the Weasleys, he did, and his friends were also part of his 'found family', but at the end of the day he came home to an empty house. He wanted a wife to kiss him hello when he got home from work and children to jump in his arms.
"I need to know, Ginny," he said softly, reaching out for her hand. "I'm so... lonely. I want to get married and have kids as quickly as I can because I'm lonely. I want a big family. A family I can call my own, that lives here with me. I can wait for you to be ready, but you're scaring me. Lately it seems like you'll never be ready and you're just delaying the inevitable."
"You want a big family?" This admission more than the others seemed to make her lower lip tremble and her voice stretched thin. Was she surprised? Hopefully in a good way?
"Huge," Harry grinned and gave her hand a squeeze. "As big as yours maybe."
She pulled her hand slowly from his grip and the smile slid off his face. Not in a good way then. "Having a big family is like having pieces of your heart outside your body," she haltingly explained. "You can't get those pieces back. When Fred died, and Ron, they took their pieces of me with them. My heart is already stretched so thin... I don't know if I'd survive trying to give over any more of it."
"What are you saying?"
"I don't think I want kids, Harry. Ever."
The annoying cuckoo clock with a permanent sticking charm chimed the hour and its taxidermied golden snidget popped out six times. Upstairs, Harry could hear Kreacher shuffling around and muttering. Outside, a car backfired. And somewhere, he was sure, someone could hear the sound of his heart shattering.
Ginny didn't want kids. Harry did want kids.
What were they going to do?
"Ginny!" a shimmering silver weasel burst through the wall and landed on the moldy rug before them. It was Arthur Weasley's patronus. "Everything is fine, but come to St. Mungo's when you can. Fleur went into labor! The baby is coming!"
"The baby..." Ginny looked like she couldn't currently process the meaning of her father's message, but Harry leapt into action and pulled both their traveling cloaks out of the closet.
"You're going to be an auntie," he managed to say with as much cheer as he could muster.
"An auntie... Voldemort's nipple I'm going to be an auntie..." Ginny still looked mildly concussed, so Harry pulled her to her feet and began arranging her cloak over her shoulders. With a shake of her head, she snapped out of her fog. "I'm so sorry, Harry, about what I said before."
He bit his lip. Now wasn't the time to finish their conversation, but he couldn't help searching for a balm for his wounds. "I want you to feel comfortable being honest with me. Always. Even if it's not something I want to hear." Ginny nodded in acquiescence when he paused. "Were you being honest when you said you don't want kids?" Another nod. "Do you... do you want to break up... with me?"
Ginny vehemently shook her head and dove headfirst into his chest, burying herself once more in his auror uniform. She sobbed for a few minutes while they clung to each other, but Harry's eyes were dry. He might have been in shock.
"But..." she sniffled and raised her head. "But maybe we should... break up... if what you and I want in life is so different."
"Maybe..."
Hermione skidded to a halt at the entryway of the Obstetrics Department of St. Mungo's and nearly toppled the potted plant beside the doorway.
"Oh sorry dear, you didn't need to drop everything and get here in such a rush. These things often take time, you know!" Molly rose from her seat to usher Hermione further into the waiting area where the rest of the Weasley family was gathered. Only Ginny and Harry had yet to arrive. Charlie, George, and Percy greeted her with a warm hug, a playful hair ruffling, and a stiff handshake respectively. "Arthur went to fetch us some tea and snacks in case we'll be here a while."
"What time did Fleur check in then?"
"Not too long ago, maybe half past five? They were already in London having dinner so Bill was able to get her here quickly after her water broke."
Arthur returned with a tea tray held aloft by his wand and began doling out refreshments. When he reached Hermione he gave her a fond head pat and a cup of tea prepared exactly how she liked it. It was comfortable being back around the Weasleys, they knew her so well. She felt a pang of regret for avoiding them following Ron's funeral, or since graduation really.
As though she'd lifted the thought from Hermione's head with legilimency, Molly whispered, "Are you all right? Only, the family has missed seeing you lately."
"Oh, yes, er... I've just been busy, I suppose. I'm trying to find a sponsor for a piece of legislation I authored for elf labor protections." That was true, at least, if not wholly the reason she'd been absent. Of course, Molly had raised the twins, and wouldn't be so easily fooled.
"Hermione, would you take a walk with me? There's a rooftop garden and I feel like some fresh air would do me good."
"Of course! Are you sure though? Shouldn't we be here in case the baby comes?"
Molly waved off her concern. "We've plenty of time and if I'm wrong Arthur will send for us. Let's walk."
Perplexed, but seeing no reason to decline, Hermione followed Molly to the lifts up to the top floor. The view really was stunning, especially with the golden colors of sunset washing over the skyline.
"I found a journal in Ron's room after he... well... after." The abruptness of hearing Ron's name nearly startled Hermione into dropping her teacup over the railing. That would've been a nasty shock for whoever was walking below. What could Ron have possibly written about in the journal that was making Molly look at her so strangely? Surely not... "He wrote about what he did to you last year. Is it true?"
"I don't..." Hermione's mind labored to find the right words to get out of this uncomfortable conversation, but couldn't divine what those magic words would be. Was Molly upset? Would she deny it happened? How much truth did Ron put in his journal anyway? She couldn't read the answers from Molly, mostly because she couldn't face her direction at all, and so she stayed silent.
"Oh, I'm so sorry, dear, of course it's true. I can tell just by looking you! I didn't mean to make you feel defensive. Come here..." Before she could understand what was happening, Hermione found herself held gently against Molly's bosom in an embrace only a mother could give. It brought tears to her eyes. Tears of mourning, tears of pain, and tears of relief. Of all people, she'd expected Molly to be on Ron's side, as she always had been. This was the same woman who had once sent Hermione the smallest Easter Egg based on the viscious lies and rumors spread by Rita Skeeter. But perhaps learning about it in Ron's own words had made all the difference. Or maybe they'd just grown closer because of the war.
"He wrote about it?" she questioned in a watery voice.
"A fair bit actually. Not much detail about what happened, more about how he felt about it all. I hope it helps to know that he felt remorse about it. That was very clear in his entries."
Did it help? In some ways it was easier for Hermione to paint Ron as the villain, to hate him purely and simply for hurting her. In other ways, carrying those feelings for someone she had once loved was corrosive, and knowing he felt remorse brought back some of the humanity she'd lost sight of in him. At least he hadn't gone so far over the line between good and evil that he couldn't recognize it. The part of her that had been Ron's friend was glad for that.
"I still can't forgive him," Hermione mumbled, burrowing deeper into Molly's arms. Hoping that Molly would forgive her for hating her son.
"I don't expect you to, that's not why I told you," she cooed, reassuring Hermione by smoothing out the curls running down her back. "I do hope that one day you can forgive him for yourself though. So you can heal."
"I am healing," Hermione insisted with a wet sniffle, thinking about the progress she'd made in sleeping with Marc. She hadn't needed to forgive Ron for that.
"That's wonderful. I want nothing but happiness for you, same as any of my other children."
"I'm sorry I've been avoiding you all," Hermione admitted through no small amount of misery.
"I can't imagine it would have been easy to be around us while we were grieving Ron."
"Not especially..."
"Please don't take this the wrong way, dear, because I say this under the assumption that you know that you will always be welcome in our home... but I don't want you to feel pressure to take care of us or even be around us if you don't want to be."
"Molly!" Hermione looked up in alarm.
"Again, our door is always open to you. I'm not kicking you out of the family. Lifetime membership, I'm afraid. No transfers, voids, or refunds," Molly chuckled drawing Hermione back into the cocoon of her arms. "I had hoped that it would become official with you becoming my daughter-in-law, but that didn't happen. One day though, you're going to be someone else's daughter-in-law, and I don't want you to feel held back by us. You can move on. Your future husband might think it a bit odd if you keep hanging around your ex's family. Especially after what Ron did to you."
"I suppose..." She really had no intention of ever telling this hypothetical future husband what Ron had done to her.
"But if you ever need me, or want to talk about what happened. I'm here for you."
"I love you, Molly," Hermione dried her eyes and straightened her rumpled shirt. She'd need to pull herself together if they were going to rejoin the family vigil downstairs.
"I love you too, dear," she returned with a pinch to the cheek.
The alert chime of the hospital intercom interrupted their sappiness and the bored voice of a mediwitch screeched out from the speakers.
"Miss Hermione Granger, please come to the reception desk on the ground floor. We have an urgent message for you. Repeat: Miss Hermione Granger, come to reception. Thank you."
"I wonder what that's about?" Hermione mused aloud.
"Only one way to find out. They said it was urgent so go ahead. I'm going to stay up here another moment and then head back to the waiting area." Molly had pulled out a handkerchief to wipe away her own tears, but reached over to quickly give Hermione's face a swipe first.
"Okay, I'll meet you back there unless I get called away."
"Send your patronus so I know everything's all right if you have to leave."
Finding herself rushing through the hospital a second time, Hermione took pains to more gracefully halt her momentum so that she wouldn't upend any more décor.
"Hello, I'm Hermione Granger," she panted breathlessly. "You have a message for me?"
"Yes this envelope just arrived via owl addressed to you." The mediwitch staffing the front desk handed over an oddly shaped letter. Clearly there was more than parchment inside. The front only said 'Matter of life or death! For Hermione Granger's eyes only!! Time sensitive!!!'
Not keen to dawdle if the message was as dire as it seemed, Hermione ripped the envelope open and pulled out the letter, dislodging the mystery item that presumably had distended the envelope and letting it fall to the floor. The letter wasn't much use though, all it said was 'pick it up'. No signature.
What was the 'it' she was supposed to pick up? The mystery item? Hermione looked down and saw that the mystery item was just a small pearlescent button. It seemed harmless enough. What would it hurt to pick it up as the letter instructed?
Feeling a bit like Alice in Wonderland, Hermione stooped to grab the button, but found that as soon as she touched it there was an unpleasant tug behind her navel. Then, the colors of the hospital lobby blurred together in a swirling vortex at the same time that she felt the sensation of being squeezed through a tube.
Hermione had only a split second to realize two things: 1) she had forgotten her promise to Theo to stay away from St. Mungo's lest she die a likely painful death at the hands of Dolohov and Greyback, and 2) the button was a portkey.
A/N: Cliffhanger! Also, there's been a lot of crying in this fic so far. Sorry about that... just an emotional shit storm in here. But I'm not sorry enough to stop doing it so expect more angst and crying in at least the next two chapters. We'll see after that :)