A/N: thank you all for your wonderful comments on thus story! beware of the angst in this chapter. it's a lot.
12 years earlier…
"Ron, stop it!" Hermione protested, but her accompanying giggle did little to persuade Ron to actually cease the attack of his lips on her neck. "We're due for dinner downstairs in ten minutes."
"That's plenty of time," Ron murmured, his hand drifting beneath her shirt.
"You're insatiable."
Ron lifted his head and grinned at her. "Guilty."
There were exactly twenty-three days before she had to return to Hogwarts for her delayed seventh year, and while that meant that she was in actuality in favor of spending every single moment in Ron's company—preferably with a large chunk of that time devoted to the activities he was currently initiating— the fact that they both currently lived at the Burrow meant that their opportunities for intimacies were rare and often hurried.
"We wasted—so much—bloody time—not wasting—any more." Ron alternated between kissing her and trying to get his point across, but his lips traveled lower as he spoke and Hermione was struggling to even concentrate on what he was saying, let alone care, too overwhelmed with the desires he was stirring up. Not that they were ever far from the surface to begin with.
Hermione gave a satisfied sigh as he pushed her shirt up to her shoulders. "At least the testing board agreed to let me take the NEWTs early, so it's only three months."
"Not even. I've already got my requests for time off in for all your Hogsmeade weekends."
Hermione sat up abruptly. "You have?"
"Of course."
She pulled his face back down to hers, kissing him deeply. "You're right, ten minutes is plenty of time."
"There must be a mistake."
Madam Pomfrey raised an eyebrow at Hermione. "I wasn't aware you had become a fully qualified healer while you were away last year."
"I haven't, of course, but—" Hermione took a deep breath. "Are you sure? I mean...that's impossible."
"Are you sexually active?"
"I—well—" Hermione stammered and her face burned with embarrassment. "Yes, but—we've been careful. Every time."
Madam Pomfrey extinguished the glowing blue light from her wand that indicated the news. "Unfortunately, Miss Granger, much like muggle contraceptives, the magical methods are not one hundred percent reliable."
"That's—but—" It was troubling, having both words and magic fail her. "I can't be...pregnant." She whispered the word, as if that would make it less real. She was only nineteen. The war had only ended a few months earlier, and her parents were still somewhere in Australia, yet to be located after her elaborate memory charms. She hadn't even sat her NEWTs yet, though since she was taking them at the end of term, she would at least be out of school before the baby was born. Merlin's pants. A baby. What would Ron say when she told him?
"Indeed you are, though. About two months along, by my calculations." Hermione could feel the panic on her face, and Madam Pomfrey's expression softened. "You will be just fine, my dear. I will arrange with the Headmistress for you to have a full appointment at St. Mungo's in the next week or so."
Hermione left the Hospital Wing feeling numb. Ginny was waiting up for her in the common room, and the concern on her face was clear immediately. "Everything okay? What did Madam Pomfrey say?"
"It's just a stomach bug. I'm going to bed." Ginny frowned at Hermione's abrupt dismissal but settled back down into her chair.
"Sure. 'Night."
Fortunately, they were due for a Hogsmeade visit that very weekend. If they hadn't been, Hermione would have asked special permission from Professor McGonagall to Floo to Grimmauld Place to break the news to Ron; the fact that they were going to be parents wasn't something she felt she should tell him via owl.
He looked positively giddy when she met him in High Street on Saturday, sweeping her up in his arms, and she felt the horrible weight of guilt for what she had to tell him. Ron noticed her lackluster mood immediately. "What's wrong?"
Hermione was near tears before she could even get the words out. "We need to talk."
Ron had been shocked, of course, and had voiced the same indignant protest Hermione had—"But we always did the charm!"—but then he had held her and stroked her hair and promised her that everything would be fine. They had owled back and forth incessantly over the following week, making plans about what they would do after Hermione finished school, where they would live, how they would manage childcare while they both worked, and it felt good to have a plan. Even though no part of her had ever imagined becoming a mother in her teens, Hermione was starting to feel okay about the situation.
And then they had gone to her first appointment at St. Mungo's.
"Everything looks good," the healer said as she finished up her examination. "I estimate that you're due on April third, and it seems that you're going to have two very healthy babies. I see there were some concerns about the after-effects of the cruciatus curse from your medical evaluation last summer, but it appears to be a non-issue."
Hermione's grip on Ron's hand tightened. "Excuse me?"
"Sometimes we see in patients who have been victim to the cruciatus a significant amount of scar tissue, and—" Hermione shook her head emphatically.
"Not that."
Ron, whose face had gone alarmingly pale, was clearly on the same wavelength, as he said, "I think what Hermione means is—two babies?"
"Oh." The healer checked her chart again, then nodded. "Yes. You're having twins. Congratulations. Would you like to see them?"
Things had been chaotic after that, as they had told Ron's parents, told Harry, spent one Hogsmeade weekend not in Hogsmeade but looking at flats in London, only to realize how horribly expensive they all were. Hermione studied, Ron continued his Auror training, and after the NEWTs and Christmas holidays, they moved into the Burrow, which lasted all of two weeks before Molly's fussing over Hermione and her growing belly started driving Hermione crazy and she and Ron took Harry up on his offer to live at Grimmauld Place instead, at least for the time being.
"She means well," Ron had said, one night not long after they had moved in.
"I've read every baby book I can find and it's already making my head fit to explode. I don't need more advice," Hermione had said.
It was mid-February, and Hermione felt roughly the size of a house, when Kingsley gave them the news that her parents had been found in Australia. They were doing just fine, and with Hermione's permission, Kingsley planned to send a small team of British Aurors there to reverse the memory spell and bring them home. Ron, though still technically a trainee, had insisted on being a part of the team to go, and if Hermione's body hadn't been so wracked with hormones, she might have been grateful for this, but instead she was just irritated.
"So you're going to leave me here alone while you go off on an Outback adventure?" she demanded after Kingsley had left.
"You won't be alone, Harry's here. And I'm sure you can go stay at the Burrow until I get back," Ron said logically.
"I don't want Harry. I don't want to go to the Burrow. I'm carrying your children, I want you."
"Hermione, I'm doing this for you. They're your parents, and seeing as you can't go—"
"What do you mean, I can't go?" Hermione asked, her eyes narrowed dangerously. "You don't get to tell me what I can and can't do, Ron."
"I'm not!" Ron exclaimed, looking rightfully hurt. "You're over seven months pregnant. The healers won't let you take a portkey. It's not safe. For you or the babies." He cautiously stepped closer to her and reached out a hand to rest on her shoulder. "I don't have to go, but I thought you might want your parents to have a friendly face there."
She should have told him that he was right. She should have thanked him for what he was offering to do for her. Instead, what came out was, "And at what point is your friendly face going to tell them that you got their daughter pregnant?"
Ron had been much more understanding about this particular fight than Hermione knew she deserved, and when he got back from Australia, her parents in tow, she devoted plenty of time to making it up to him. Jean and Hugo had been shocked enough about everything that had transpired in their absence without being greeted after nearly a year by their very pregnant daughter without any warning, so Ron had had the unfortunate task of breaking that news to them as well. They had taken it in stride, and Hermione was much more receptive to her own mother's child-rearing advice (to Ron's suppressed annoyance), and six weeks later, they were the parents to two beautiful redheaded girls.
But if Hermione had thought that her life would become less stressful after the babies were born, she was sorely mistaken.
Nobody slept. They were all grumpy. The girls couldn't get on any kind of regular, synchronized schedule for eating or sleeping, which meant that Ron and Hermione didn't either, and their previously adorable bickering had turned into cold sniping about whose turn it was to change a diaper or why Ron found it so difficult to put the girls' clothes into the laundry basket rather than on the floor or how Hermione expected them to have any kind of fulfilling relationship when they were well past the healers' recommended length of time for postpartum abstinence and she would barely even look at him. The fact of the matter was that Ron was just so tired that he couldn't have cared less where the clothes ended up and that Hermione was just so terrified of getting pregnant again so soon that she held herself back even though of course she still wanted him...but true to form, talking calmly and rationally had never been their strong suit, and the stress of raising twins exacerbated all of it.
By the time summer rolled around, they were doing little but arguing. Hermione was frustrated because despite her credentials, she had yet to find a job that appealed to both her interests and her young family's financial needs. Ron was making enough money as a junior auror to take care of them all, but they wanted to get their own place and move out of Harry's, and that wasn't going to happen without Hermione bringing in an income. Both of their parents helped with necessities for the girls, along with plenty of non-necessities—Arthur in particular had taken on the role of doting grandparent with gusto—but for the first time in her life, Hermione felt like she wasn't pulling her own weight, and she hated it.
George had offered early on to let her help out at the shop, as few or as many hours as she wanted, and though it took months of convincing, Hermione finally conceded. Ron's pride was hurt, feeling like he couldn't provide for his family on his own, and Hermione, if for no other reason than to get out of the house, began picking up more and more shifts, until finally, everything came to a head on Halloween night.
Hermione had been late at the shop, and when she arrived home to Grimmauld Place that night, the place was a mess. Ron and Rose were both covered in some sort of mushy baby food while Holly wailed nearby in her crib. "Where have you been?" Ron asked sharply, wiping the food from Rose's face as Hermione went to pick up Holly. "Mum wanted us to come over for Halloween."
"It was inventory night at the shop. You'd know that if you ever listened to me," she couldn't help snapping back. She bounced Holly on her hip, but the motion did nothing to stop the sobbing.
Ron rolled his eyes. "Fine. Worst boyfriend ever. Point made. Can you help me out here?"
"Ron, I'm exhausted!" Hermione exclaimed. "Can't you take care of them for one night on your own?"
"Clearly not, I s'pose!" Ron shot back, gesturing around himself to the room. "It's a wonder I even put my shoes on the right feet in the morning without your help, isn't it?"
"I didn't say that!"
"You didn't have to!"
Hermione let out a groan of frustration. "Stop it! Stop putting words in my mouth! You always do this, Ron, and I'm sick of it!"
"At least I bloody talk to you! I don't feel like I even have a girlfriend half the time!"
"Well, I'm so sorry," Hermione said, drawing out the words sarcastically, "that what little energy I have is going to the girls and not to you. Is that what you want me to say? That we can just ignore them when they cry—" which they were both now doing "—or need to be fed, or their nappies changed, so that you can feel like you have a girlfriend?"
When she would look back later, she would realize that that was the moment where an invisible rift had erupted between them: Ron and Rose on one side, and her and Holly on the other. She hadn't realized, at the time, that the rift would carry them all the way through to the start of their daughters' magical education, but in hindsight, it was clear that was where it had started.
The argument had only escalated from there, and they had finally both stormed out in opposite directions, each still holding a baby, and thus, though not entirely intentionally, creating the arrangement that had carried them through the eleven intervening years: Holly and Hermione on one side of the Atlantic, and Rose and Ron on the other.
