Chapter 6: Daddy Comes Back
Wet and sputtering, Harry shook the dampness from his eyes, hardly daring to believe it. There, after weeks upon weeks, stood a grinning Ron. Ron, who had just saved him from drowning in a frozen pond. Ron, who had retrieved the sword of Gryffindor when he couldn't.
Now, they could finally, finally destroy a Horcrux. Harry lay the locket flat on a rock, and with a hiss of Parsletongue, opened it. Instantly, a tornado of dark magic exploded from its depths.
"I have seen your heart, and it is mine..."
"Don't listen to it!" Harry bellowed over the howling of the wind. "STAB IT!"
"I have seen your dreams, Ronald Weasley, and I have seen your fears... all that you desire is possible, but all that you dread is also possible..."
"Ron, it's lying!" Harry screamed, but Ron appeared not to have heard him.
"Least loved, always, by the mother who craved a daughter... Least loved, now, by the girl who prefers your friend... Least loved now, by the baby who yearns for another father... Second best, always, eternally overshadowed..."
Then three white figures appeared out of the blackness: perverted renderings of Harry, Hermione and Rose.
"We were better without you... happier without you..." Fake Harry sneered.
"Who could look at you, compared to Harry Potter? What are you, compared with the Chosen One? What are you, compared with the Boy Who Lived?" Fake Hermione jeered.
"I never needed you," Fake Rosie declared. "I have a new Daddy now..."
"Your mother professed that she would prefer me as a son... your daughter wants me to be her father..." Harry laughed.
"What woman would take you? You are nothing, nothing, nothing compared to him." Fake Hermione pronounced.
Then the ghosts of Harry and Hermione, naked, embraced and kissed; Hermione had flowers in her hair. Then, both were closed, Hermione in a wedding dress, with Rose nestled between the couple.
"NOOOOO!" Ron and the sword sliced through the scene, cutting down on the locket hard. There was a bang and a flash and then... nothing.
The real Harry emerged from his hiding place to find Ron down on his knees, head in his arms, weeping bitterly. Though he desperately wanted to comfort his friend, deny the blasphemy that Riddle had just concocted, words failed Harry. He simply helped Ron to his feet and trudged back towards the tent.
Hermione and Rose were cuddled together, asleep in their bunk, when Harry's distant voice calling out to them awoke mother and daughter from their slumber. Rose in her arms, Hermione stepped from the tent, to find Harry and a stranger trailing after him. Well, no, he wasn't a stranger... she had seen him in her dreams... in the replay of the best night of her life, the night they had conceived their baby...
"Hey," Ron's lopsided grin nearly broke his face.
Dead silence. Jaw set, Hermione thrust Rose into Harry's chest without even turning her head, advancing on Ron.
"You... complete... ARSE, Ronald Weasley! You crawl back here after weeks... and you say 'Hey'?" With a scream of rage, she tackled Ron to the forest floor.
However, in the next second, she was crying, gasping with relief, breathlessly kissing the life out of Ron's body, rolling them both around the snowy ground.
"Oh! Mmmm... mmmmm... They said on the wireless you were dead, Ron!... Mmmm... They said you were dead - and I believed them! Oooooh, I never want to feel that way again!"
Thoroughly snogged, Ron sat up, dazed. "Does this mean you accept my apology?"
"NO!" Hermione snapped, angrily pushing him down into the snow.
"DADDY!" And there was his Rosie, running towards him with an ecstatic look on her face and leaping into Ron's arms. The little girl nuzzled her face into his neck. "I love you so much..." she whimpered.
"I love you," Ron breathed, tears pricking at his eyes. "So much..."
Ron just caught the tender smile on Hermione's face before it disappeared. "Don't think this changes anything," she snarled. "Rosie, time for breakfast, sweetheart." And mother and child headed for the tent flap, hand in hand, leaving Harry and Ron staring after them.