Snippets

Chapter Six

The snow crunches under Hermione's boots as she steps outside from the front door of the Burrow. A chill whips through the air, blowing her hair to her left side. Hermione reaches into her beaded bag and fishes around for the new pair of mittens which Molly gifted to her earlier in the evening.

It's as Hermione is slipping the mittens onto her hands, as the snow falls around her, that she feels almost as if she has been here before. Her mind starts to whirl with possibilities but is cut short when Harry shouts her name from the front door.

Hermione paces back and forth, squeezing the tip of her left ring finger in an attempt to vent her anxieties in a somewhat productive way without adding to the already-tense atmosphere in the room.

In the next moment, Hermione feels a pair of strong hands on her shoulders, halting her furious pacing.

"She's going to be fine, Hermione," Charlie Weasley says softly, his own voice betraying his unease. "Women have babies every day. C'mon, sit. You're not helping Ginny by pacing holes into the floor."

Hermione nods and takes a seat in the St. Mungo's waiting room between Charlie and Padma but doesn't release her grip on her own finger. Ginny wasn't supposed to be due for another two weeks. Hermione knows that based on the vague medical knowledge that she has that doesn't pertain to the brain, that at thirty-eight weeks, it's likely that both Ginny and the baby will be fine, but that doesn't negate the shock of having Harry yell out the door that they needed to get to Mungo's as soon as possible.

Hermione bounces her leg in lieu of her previous pacing until Padma claps her hand over her knee to halt her.

"Hermione," Padma admonishes quietly, and it almost makes Hermione laugh that she's once again using her Healer Voice.

Hermione frowns and she is about to apologize to Padma when she blinks and another vision hits her. She vaguely registers grabbing Padma's hand and squeezing it, as well as the voices of Padma, Ron and Charlie saying her name, but her focus is on the man.

It's been a while since Hermione has had a vision about him– fortunately or unfortunately, she has yet to decide.

In this vision, vision-Hermione is kneeling behind the man on what looks to be her own bed in her current flat. He's sitting on the edge of the bed at the foot, facing away from her, and vision-Hermione is behind him with her arms around his shoulders, running her fingers over the bare skin on his back, neck and chest. Real-Hermione can tell that this is the same fair-skinned man she's been seeing in her visions, but this time, with the added detail of hair color. He's blonde– pale blonde, not dirty blonde.

Vision-Hermione smiles against his skin before she presses her lips to the spot behind his right ear. Vision-Hermione whispers something in the man's ear, which real-Hermione cannot hear, but by the way that vision-Hermione bites her lip and brushes the tip of her index her finger along the shell of the same ear she just whispered into, real-Hermione figures that she could likely make an educated guess as to the content of the aforementioned whisper.

Fortunately for real-Hermione, that is where the vision ends. When Hermione comes to, Padma is kneeling in front of her with one hand on her bicep and the other shining some sort of penlight into Hermione's right eye.

"Are you with me, Hermione?" Padma asks, lowering her penlight and tucking it into her handbag before reclaiming her seat beside Hermione.

Hermione shakes her head and rubs her forehead with the palm of one hand before responding. Upon realizing that this is the first time Hermione has had a vision in front of anyone, she begins spewing questions at Padma– not for the first time, grateful that her friend is a Healer.

"How long was I out? What happened?"

Padma places a comforting hand on Hermione's arm before she speaks.

"Your eyes were closed, you squeezed my hand, but then went limp– you almost seemed asleep, except that you'd been wide awake just the minute before. I've never seen anything like it," Padma explains, her voice shaking slightly, which strikes Hermione with unease. Padma is an Accidents and Emergencies Healer, as well as the most level-headed person Hermione knows, so to see her even the slightest bit frazzled absolutely gives Hermione pause. "You were out for a few minutes."

Hermione nods, smiling weakly when she sees Charlie returning– despite not realizing that he'd even gone anywhere– with a paper cup of, presumably, coffee. She whispers a shaky 'thank you' to the man before accepting the cup from his hands and taking a sip.

"When do you see your Healer again?" Padma asks, brushing a handful of hairs off of Hermione's forehead like a mother would do to her crying child.

Hermione is about to open her mouth to respond– to tell Padma that she has an appointment with Healer Greengrass at the end of the week– when Harry emerges from a doorway off to the right of the waiting room.

His smile is ear-to-ear and his cheeks are blotchy as if he's been crying.

"It's a girl."

Hermione finally arrives home from St. Mungo's at approximately four-thirty in the morning on the twenty-sixth of December.

Lily Luna Potter was born at 2:14 a.m. on the twenty-sixth of December, eagerly awaited by her friends and family, and although Hermione is thrilled to have another niece, she finds herself still hung up on the vision.

Hermione walks into her bedroom and stares for a moment at the foot of her bed. The juxtaposition between having 'seen' someone else in that spot just hours ago and now seeing nothing apart from the jumper that she slept in last night which she left out on the bed yesterday morning in exactly the place she left it, fills Hermione with a sense of sadness and longing.

Hermione has been happily single for multiple years now. She's gone on dates here and there when someone has asked, but she has not actively sought out a relationship in several years– and she has been mostly content with that. However, on days like today, when she's surrounded by happy couples and even something so miraculous like the beauty of a new birth, Hermione can't help but wonder if marriage and children are in her future.

Hermione thinks that if she were to squint her eyes just right that perhaps she could see him again. She knows logically that the man from her visions doesn't exist– that he's a figment of her imagination– but that doesn't actually give Hermione as much solace as she thinks it probably should. Instead, she finds herself almost disappointed that, at least, if her visions were snippets of her future, then she could be certain that yes, a man and a child would be in her life at some point.

The halls feel much smaller than Hermione remembers as she makes her way through them. They're the same, but also different. The sconces on the walls are the same, but they seem smaller, somehow, than in the past.

Hermione pushes open the heavy door to the library and steps through. At her desk– as if the year is still 1995– sits Madam Pince, her hooked nose buried in a large tome, which looks to be a registry of some kind.

Hermione slips past Madam Pince's desk as if she were still a second-year out past curfew, despite being a grown adult with permission from the Headmistress to be here, and heads off towards the back of the library just before the restricted section.

Hermione, as is probably obvious, has done plenty of research on her condition since the onset of the visions, however, her research was limited to books and studies that she could get her hands on in bookshops and Muggle libraries. It hadn't even occurred to her to reach out to Headmistress McGonogall and ask her for access to the Hogwarts library until she had exhausted all of the books on neurological conditions from the Muggle libraries she's visited.

Hermione is nearly certain that her condition is magical in nature. Based on all of the information that she has up to this point, as well as the fact that she has maintained her job and relationships in light of her condition, has led her to this conclusion. Healer Greengrass has also seemed to think as much with her focus on magical causes, such as Time-Turners or Seer heritage.

Hermione passes a handful of students hunched over study carrels and others with books strewn across tables and she smiles fondly to herself. Some days, despite the difficulties– and that's putting it mildly– of her school years, she finds herself missing them, missing these aspects in particular. She misses the studying, the meals in the Great Hall and even the times spent cheering for Harry and Ron during quidditch, despite her own aversion to flying and the sport as a whole.

Hermione stops when she reaches the aisle of bookshelves dedicated to health and healing. Surprisingly, Hermione hadn't frequented this aisle during her school years– especially surprising when she considers how often one or more of her closest friends were injured or maimed during that time.

As she scans the shelves, Hermione is met with the realization that the magical world seems quite behind when it comes to education on human anatomy and functionality– at least, in comparison to her limited knowledge attained from Muggle books.

Hermione plucks three books from the shelves which she thinks might be of use to her. Unfortunately, the vast majority of the books which pertain to magical neurological disorders or defects are more in the vein of Mind Healing, which isn't exactly what Hermione needs. The magical world's Mind Healing is more equivalent to the Muggle world's psychiatry, and if Healer Greengrass' assessment is to be believed, Hermione's cognition is not the issue here.

Hermione, along with her three books, takes a seat at a study carrel up against one of the tall windows at the back of the library. The window overlooks the grounds, and for a moment, Hermione is fifteen again and studying for an essay in Professor Snape's class.

Hermione flicks open the first book and begins to read, hoping to find anything that might help her or that she could relay to Healer Greengrass during their next appointment.

It's after Hermione has scanned through the first book that she remembers that in a magical library, she could also likely find books on Seers and Time-Turners, so, in an effort to also stretch her legs, Hermione stands to search those aisles too.

Now armored with four more books, Hermione parks herself back at her study carrel and digs back in. As she reads, she can hear the scuff of Madam Pince's shoes as she monitors the aisles and the flutter of books being sent back to their homes and it fills her with an overwhelming sense of 'home.'

Hermione feels at home in her flat, and she feels at home at the Burrow and at 12 Grimmauld Place, but she thinks that there's perhaps nowhere which feels quite so much like home than Hogwarts. Hermione decides in that moment that she will have to visit her alma-mater more often, as she believes that exposure therapy is perhaps the only way to drive out the nightmares which still haunt these halls in her mind.

Hermione spends the next several hours pouring over the books which she found on any of the subjects that she thought might've been of use to her, scribbling out notes on a piece of parchment to her right. Once finished with her notes for today, she tucks the parchment into the front cover of her journal, so as not to forget to mention her findings to Healer Greengrass.

When Hermione finally begins to go cross-eyed and cannot stand to look at another page, she waves her wand, sends her books flying back to their homes and rises from her chair. Before leaving the castle, though, Hermione has one more stop to make.

Hi, friends! (:

I'm exhausted today, so I unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on who's being asked) do not have much commentary on this particular chapter.

I do hope, however, that you've enjoyed it, and I thank you for spending a bit of your time here with me this week. Keep those reviews coming, and I'll see you again next week. (: