Part II: The Good Ship Has Sailed

Hugo Granger-Weasley was beaming as he waved goodbye to his parents, much like his older sister had just a short while ago.

Hermione Granger waved back and blew him a kiss, missing him already.

Unlike Rose, Hugo was not headed to Hogwarts; he was going to spend the weekend on a brief holiday to Wizarding Spain with his uncle and aunt, Harry and Ginny Potter.

Ginny was an international celebrity as the talented, multi-position Captain of the Holyhead Harpies and she was scheduled to do a cover shoot for Quidditch World Digest. Harry had the idea of bringing along Lily and Hugo and making a holiday out of it, a neat distraction to keep them from dwelling on how they had a few more years until they joined their siblings at Hogwarts. The Potters would be back from Ibiza with Hugo on Sunday afternoon.

Hugo still wouldn't be back home once he returned from Spain.

On Sunday, he'd have dinner in Godric's Hollow, then be brought over to Shell Cottage to spend the night with another uncle and aunt, Uncle Bill and Aunt Fleur. Along with Lily and Hugo, Bill and Fleur's youngest son Louis would be returning for another school year at the primary school in Hogsmeade as Year Three students. Fleur had volunteered to be the one to see them off on the magical school bus that traveled Britain daily to take little witches and wizards to day school. Then, Arthur Weasley would keep his yearly tradition of picking up his grandchildren at the end of their first day of school, to be brought to The Burrow for dinner.

Without her knowledge or input, Ron had neatly arranged for their only remaining child to be away on a very long weekend – and Hermione couldn't be more furious.

Hugo spending time with his huge, loving extended family wasn't the problem. The Potter-Granger-Weasley grandchildren sometimes seemed interchangeable, with how easily they went from home to home among their huge, adoring network of aunts and uncles and godparents and grandparents.

The problem was why Ron had arranged for Hugo to be gone for several days.

Hermione Granger forced herself to smile until her son disappeared from sight with Harry and Ginny and Lily, the Portkey whisking the Potters plus one away from London.

Only when she and Ron stood alone on the platform did she turned to him with a glare.

"How dare you. I can't believe you didn't tell me about this until right before we left!" Hate raced right alongside with last shreds of the love she'd had for this man since they were very young children; distantly, Hermione was shocked at how strongly she could loathe someone she had spent nearly all of her life loving. "You sent our son away so that you could go and see her, didn't you?" Hermione accused him, coldly.

Ron looked at her, flatly. However cold her tone was, his eyes were far colder.

He ignored her accusation.

"Hugo wanted to go with Gin and Harry because she's doing that photoshoot with Oliver Wood. You know he's mad about Oliver and obsessed with his upcoming final season in the League." Ron took the car keys and held them out to her, dangling them impatiently, but she didn't move to take them. "You're being a nightmare, as usual, about something simple enough. Here, take the car back to the house and I will follow you there. I don't want to deal with the traffic –"

"I want a divorce."

The words came out of her mouth before she could stop it.

The firm, vicious declaration cut across his lies like a sword and Ron blinked at her.

Something then changed in his face that made her very sure of her decision before he even spoke.

"Oh, fuck off, Miss Granger." The resentment he'd always carried that she'd chosen to keep her maiden name and wouldn't be Mrs. Weasley, despite their marriage, was thick and undisguised for the first time in decades. Ron sneered at her. "You say that, but you aren't going to go through with it. Just like you didn't the first time you threatened that, ten years ago. You might be a war heroine, but you're too fucking afraid to follow through. Don't forget – I remember the first time. I remember how you cried and screamed and begged me to stay, when I tried to call your bluff and move out right after Rose was born – so, forgive me if I don't believe anything you say."

Ron tossed the keys at her feet as Hermione burned with shame and rage and more than a little bit of hurt.

"Just so you know, I am going to see Padma. You take the car back home because I'm Apparating to Birmingham and I won't be back until Tuesday morning." Ron took several steps back from her, seemingly to give proper distance for Apparition – but Hermione could also feel the distance that had nothing to do with Apparition.

He didn't seem anything like her husband of nineteen years, the brave and funny and loyal boy she'd hunted Basilisks and Philosopher's Stones with, whose side she'd stood by as they'd fought Dark Lords and rode dragons and destroyed Horcruxes with Harry. Nor could she find anything of the young man she'd eloped with at 18 and built castles in the air of their future which could rival Hogwarts. This cold and selfish man wasn't the person she'd built her life around since she was a girl. Not anymore.

Hermione felt cold that had nothing to do with the chilly Friday morning, as he readied his wand and looked at her with a touch of disdain.

"If you mean it, then do it – file the paperwork for a Divorce Decree. Otherwise, I don't want to hear about it again, Hermione."

Ron disappeared with a twist of magic, just like their son – but left none of the affection of his absence, like with Hugo.

Hermione Granger was left standing alone on Platform Nine and Three Quarters.

There was a curious feeling of being raw and scooped empty, but also dazed that she'd meant that she wanted to leave him, this time.

She was also relieved that finally he had admitted what had been keeping her awake at night for nearly a year.

He was back to having an affair with Padma Patil again.

Just like she'd found him doing when she was pregnant with their first child. The pregnancy with Rose was so conflicted and fraught, despite the years or marriage that should have made a perfect foundation for welcoming children. When Rose had been born, she'd made him choose between her and Padma – and Hermione had experienced her first real heartbreak, when he'd chosen Padma over herself and Rose.

She'd never imagined that betrayal would come from her husband. Young and with a newborn baby and just desperate to not lose the only boy she'd ever loved; Hermione had taken back her ultimatum.

She had begged him to stay.

He had stayed.

He had stayed, but he hadn't ever respected her since.

Padma had not been the first nor last time she found out he'd been unfaithful. She was the only one that he'd started living a part-time life with, an extramarital relationship that was running concurrently alongside their own actual marriage and family.

Obviously, there was something about Padma that the other ones didn't have – and apparently, neither did she, despite being his wife.

Lavender had been a mistake right before their hasty marriage, a boyish mistake in those traumatic first few weeks after the end of the Second War. Ron had sworn he was sorry and that it wouldn't happen after they'd become husband and wife – because that meant something. Once they were married, the affair with Padma had been a real breaking point, where she realized how much was at stake and how little Ron cared. The bizarre, short-lived affair he'd had with Pansy Parkinson after Hugo should have hurt as badly as Ron had intended it, but it didn't. All it had done was confirm that cruelty hurt worse when it was intentional, and her marriage was over with.

By their fifteenth wedding anniversary, Hermione was fully aware that they were only still together because of their children.

And now, here she was back where they'd started again –

Only, instead of asking for a divorce with a newborn Rose, Hermione had asked right after putting Rose on the train for the first time to Hogwarts.

Enough was enough.

This time, she was going to follow through and initiate divorce proceedings, ending her misery for good.

Hermione summoned the car keys that Ron had thrown at her and turned to walk towards the public grates of fire connected to the British Floo Network. She didn't trust herself with Apparition at the moment nor with the long drive back to Cornwall. There was hardly any wait, only one or two people before her. She glanced around, wanting to be distracted from the hollowness that seemed to be burrowing into her bones.

Hermione was startled when her gaze fell on Draco Malfoy and his wife.

Malfoy had not been seen in Wizarding Britain since he was paroled in January 2001.

There had been rumors that he was living penniless on the street after the Ministry had seized the entire Malfoy fortune and estate, while others claimed that he lived overseas under an assumed identity to hide his past war crimes. Nobody really knew the truth. Draco was simply not seen in public again after the Ministry for Magic had put him on probation for ten years and warned that the slightest infraction would see him back in Azkaban, permanently.

Hermione had been surprised to see the matured man standing earnestly with his wife, as their son departed for Hogwarts just like her own daughter.

She didn't think much about Draco Malfoy these days, but the sight of him after nearly twenty years had her intrigued.

Especially as he knelt before his wife tenderly, cradling her face delicately in his large hands as she wept so hard, she had to be seated on a bench.

Someone cleared their throat behind her, and she broke her stare at Malfoy and his attentive devotion to his wife. She was up next to take her pinch of Floo Powder and she was dawdling. Hermione wanted to, but she didn't look back at the Malfoys, as she tossed her pinch of powder into the flames and left for her empty house where nobody at all awaited her.

Certainly not a loving spouse, of which it appeared that even Draco Malfoy had come to be to the unknown woman who'd mothered his child, nineteen years later.