August 23, 2004
Harry's p.o.v
I catch the mini bullet and hoist her up on my hip. "Hello, Pomme." I look at her guardian. "Luna."
She smiled softly. "How are you, Harry?"
"Hitting myself on the head for thinking that renovating was easy." I gesture to the food. "Can I offer you girls something to drink or eat?"
"Apple juice!" Eva yelled.
"Then apple juice you shall have bichette. And you Luna?"
"Tea or pumpkin juice will suffice."
I chuckle and say, "then it's a good thing we have both. Any preference as to which?"
"Tea please," Luna answered.
"Tea it is."
I also serve myself a cup and extend both drinks to their recipients. "What brings you ladies here?"
"Thought we pop over for a visit and to deliver these." Luna pulls out a stack of letters. "They're letters from Hermione to Evangeline for when she's older."
I grab the letters. It was a big stack but it was all shrunken. "Evangeline told me about the ones Hermione wrote to me but not these." I finger through the envelopes and feel happiness at the piece of Hermione I hold in my hands.
"The letters Hermione wrote to you are more of a diary for her. Technically they belong to you as the recipient but I think Hermione has to give those to you herself."
I look at the blonde woman that had grown so different from the fourteen-year-old I had met nearly a decade ago. "Thank you, Luna." And I was grateful, sincerely so.
On the other side of the room, Kreacher was having the time of his life entertaining Evangeline to her heart's content. In the short time Luna and I had been talking, the two had amassed a selection of kid-friendly books. It hit me then that Kreacher must still miss Regulus and wanted to keep his memory — and the Black Family legacy— alive through Eva.
Eva looked up and I send her a beaming smile and an air kiss. She smiled back and "caught" the kiss.
"Eva is a good girl. She rarely gives us any trouble and — she's wanted to meet you for so long Harry."
I jump in my seat and turn back to Luna. "I thought she hated me."
Luna shakes her head sadly. "No, no, Harry. Never think that. Evangeline loves you. She's loved you since she heard about you."
"I thought Hermione hates me why would Evangeline…"
"Love you?" Luna answered. "Because Hermione doesn't hate you. She can feel many things against you but I don't think hatred was even a thought in her mind."
"I abandoned her," I whisper, "I knew she needed me but I didn't even try to go to her."
Luna reaches for my hand and squeezed. "Hermione won't tell you this but deep down she's happy you weren't there. She didn't want you to hate her if Eva didn't make it."
I look down at my lap. "I don't hate her. I can never hate her."
"Are you sure?"
"I- of course, I don't!" I snap.
Luna intertwines our fingers so I can't let go. "No one would blame you if you do. We should have told you, Harry. If anyone of us had had the guts to just talk to you!
"It wasn't like you were an abusive boyfriend or would have forced her to have an abortion. You were her best friend but we were kids out of a war that shouldn't have happened. We were all fucked up and for that I'm sorry. I'm so fucking sorry Harry.
"I'm sorry we didn't tell you about Evangeline. I'm sorry we hid Hermione's location when you asked us about her that day. I'm sorry you never knew that Hermione and Evangeline's lives were in danger. But mostly I'm sorry for all the time you lost with your daughter."
Tear blur my glasses and I grip Luna's hand harder. "When I yelled at Hermione after the dinner it felt so right, like I was justified in my anger and I was. Because you all hid my daughter from me but after Arthur kicked me out of the burrow I realized something: we were just children. All of us. We did things that no one should have to and it screwed us all over. That's why I can't hate Hermione or any of you. Because we were screwed up kids grasping at straws to be normal again." I choke out.
Neither of us said a word for a moment but the silence was okay. I felt like we were healing. Together.
"Arthur slapped me you know?"
"Sweet Arthur who couldn't hurt a fly!?"
"Yeah." A moment passed. "It was awesome." We laughed like kids we never got to be and received weird looks from Evangeline.
Hermione's p.o.v
I fiddle with my shirt before stopping and fiddling with my hair. Then I stopped and went back to my skirt. It had been a vicious cycle I had started as soon as the doctor called me into her office. I had been in there for ten minutes and neither had said anything yet.
"Why don't we start with names?"
"Mistress Hermione Granger," I answer automatically as if I was in an interview. Now there's a thought. If I treat this as an interview…
The doctor pauses and swallows. "Okay… I am Doctor Mackenzie McDouglas. Would you mind telling me why Mistress? I'm sorry if the question bothers you, I'm simply curious."
That's right. Non-magicals have a different connotation for mistress. "In my…circles… a woman who gets a mastery in her field is referred to as Mistress so-and-so just like a man would be called Master so-and-so."
She noted that down and looked back at me. "Is that you're preferred way of being referred to?"
I wave off her platitudes. "No, no, please just call me…Hermione."
"Alright, Hermione. Why don't you tell me a bit about yourself? Anything you want."
"Isn't that all in my file?" I ask.
"It is but I find that having patients talk about themselves is a better way to create the connection I need to help you." The doctor answers swiftly.
"I-alright." I take a breath in and begin, "I have a daughter. She's the only thing that matters to me. She's the reason why I'm here."
"Did she force you to come?"
"No, I'm doing it because I want to be a good mother to her. She's six you know? It was her birthday last week."
"That's good. Do you want to tell me more about her?"
I start gushing about Evangeline. She was the only thing I could talk about without feeling any pain. "Oh, she's the most beautiful child ever. When she smiles it's like the whole world lights up. She was a preemie so she's a little on the small side but you wouldn't know it from the way she acts. She's like a miniature me except she likes playing outside and is more outgoing than me. I've taken her around the entire world and she's made friends in every single one of our stops. She even keeps contact with some of them."
"Sound like she's a precocious child."
"She is. Eva is the best mix of me and—" I cut myself off before I can continue talking about Harry.
"Is there a reason you don't want to talk about Eva's father? Was he abusive or controlling?" The doctor asks worriedly.
"No!" I continue more calmly, "no, he's the best man a woman can ask for. He was my best friend before I-I messed it up. I messed us up."
"Do you want to talk about him?"
"No. Yes. I don't know."
"Are you willing to try?"
I shake my head and throw my head into my hands. I was willing to talk about anything but the war and Harry. The war was horrible but Harry…
"He was my everything." It takes me a moment to realize I'd spoken the words aloud.
"Who was?" Dr. McDouglas asked.
"Eva's father. Before Eva was born."
"Then what changed?"
"Everything."
"Could you expand on that?" She had so many questions. Why did she only have questions? Why wasn't she helping me instead of asking these questions?
"We had just finished fighting a war before I discovered that I was pregnant. We had only been together that one time and with such harsh conditions, it didn't occur to me that I could even get pregnant. I tried telling him but he cut me off and I didn't try further and I just…left. Left and didn't turn back.
"When I needed him he wasn't there. After all, I had done for me he just didn't care." The last part tears a cry out of me. "He didn't care."
The doctor tried to hide it but I saw the pity in her eyes. A girl pregnant and abandoned by the baby's father.
"How do you know?" McDouglas asked softly.
"Because when my friend sent him a message saying that I needed him he ignored it and went on with his life. It was Eva's birth that he missed.
"Did he know it was his daughter's birth that he missed?"
"No, but wasn't it enough that he knew that I needed him? Why wasn't I enough?"
Instead of answering the doctor just let me get it all out.
"I know I'm wrong to put all the blame on him. He was just as fucked up as any of us— no he was worse. He never had a family to show him what affection looked like, year after year the war kept getting worse. We asked and asked and kept on asking and never once did I think about what he needed." I pause. "No, that's a lie. I knew exactly what he needed to survive and see the war through, but I never gave him what he wanted. A family, stability, freedom to be himself. And when he did have it I turned my daughter against him. How can he not hate me? I hate myself!"
"Have you thought that maybe he understands?"
"No, he doesn't. He just buries his feelings and pretends everything is alright for the sake of everyone else. I just want him to scream at me, it's no less than I deserve."
"You keep saying that. Why do you think you deserve to be screamed that? Why do you keep putting your own feelings down?"
"BECAUSE I'M A BAD MOTHER! Because I couldn't protect myself and let my daughter get tortured. Because when it mattered I kept my mouth shut and let everyone talk down to me just so that I could do more to help my daughter recover and so that when I went back to England I wouldn't be a fucked up girl weighed down by her years of failure. But even there I fell flat. I am a failure. It's all I'll ever be."
Instead of responding to that, the doctor switched gears. "Why did you leave?"
"Because I wasn't good enough to for him then and I'm not good enough for him now."
AN: To clarify a bit: when Hermione says she's talked down on she means letting people talk to her like she was inferior to them to get the funding she needed for her research. Hermione sacrificing her sense of worth for her daughter is a no brainer for her.