Reading Time: 94 Minutes

Title: Standing At The Edge Of Time
Series: The Infinite Loop Of Love And Good Intentions
Series Order: 1
Author: Indygodusk
Fandom: Harry Potter
Genre: Angst, Drama, Family, Future Fic / Post-Canon, Hurt/Comfort, Pre-Relationship, Time Travel
Relationship(s): Gen, Harry Potter/Hermione Granger (pre-relationship)
Content Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Major Character Death, Violence-Graphic, Violence-Domestic. Bullying, Addiction, Suicide, Child Abuse-implied, Murder, Adultery, Weasley Bashing
Word Count: 90,065
Summary: Harry is going to fix Hermione’s death no matter what it takes. It’s just going to take a little time and, to be open and honest with you, a few (or more than a few) detours and deaths. Being a fair individual, Harry is not excluding himself from the dying, though he does resent the detours, especially after Rose hijacks his plan.
Artist: Drake

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Chapter 5:

∞⌛∞

∞2003, January 12—A Cheap Hotel Room Somewhere in Britain∞

~Harry Potter (22)~

Something poked Harry in the shoulder, waking him up. Groaning and smacking his lips, he swatted at it and missed. It poked him again—harder. “Rude,” he mumbled, his voice slurred. Cracking open one crusty eye, Harry blurrily saw a figure with big hair standing over him with her hands on her hips. “G’way. ‘M drun…K.” The light hurt so he closed his eye. “Sleepin’ now.”

Suddenly, the warm covers were ripped off his back, letting in winter’s icy cold. Harry whimpered and curled up into a ball. Everything hurt and his mouth tasted like arse.

“Barry Peasley Wotter, get your drunk ass up and out of that bed right now or so help me—” Hermione’s voice felt like nails being hammered into his head.

Wincing, he opened his eyes and slowly eeled his way up until his head bumped the wall, pushing himself into a sitting position with a grunt. Harry gave her a sour look and scratched at the itchy crust of either drool or dried puke on his stubbly chin. He didn’t want her here, much less seeing him like this. “M’ name’s not Barry, it’s Harry. Little Miss know-it-all isn’t very smart, is she?” He hoped that being rude would make her abandon him the way he deserved. One of his eyes wouldn’t open all of the way, painful and swollen from the punch that mouthy guy at the second-to-last bar gave him before Harry got kicked out. Or had that been last weekend? He couldn’t remember.

Hermione growled. “I know your name is Harry! But Barry Peasley Wotter is the name you registered under in an attempt to—I assume—remain anonymous and undiscovered. If so, you’re an idiot. That name couldn’t be more obvious. What were you thinking?”

Harry scowled. “I didn’t want to talk to nobody, that’s what.”

“Talk about what?”

“Everythin’ and the kitchen sink.” Fishing around in the sheets, he found a bottle with some liquid still left in it.

“Put down the bottle,” she ordered, eyes narrowing to slits. “This is not acceptable behavior.”

“You can’t tell me what to do.” He watched her with a side-eyed look as he tipped back and gulped down the alcohol. It burned going down and tasted like the back end of a troll.

“Harry, no!” Hermione ripped the bottle away from his mouth, spilling it down his chest and over his lap as she threw it away off the bed. “Alcohol isn’t the answer for your problems.”

“It could be. You didn’t write the test. You don’t know,” he argued.

“Yes, I do!”

“Add in pills and potions and it numbs even better,” he schooled her condescendingly.

Grinding her teeth, she said, “You look and smell horrible.”

“Ten points to Gryffindor,” Harry slurred, looking down and scratching at his chest. The movement stirred the air and forced him to catch a whiff of himself. Almost gagging, he jerked his head away. “Ugh, why don’t you just go away?”

“I don’t want to,” she said primly. “And you can’t make me.”

“Get. Out,” he enunciated.

“No. Harry, just—just talk to me. What’s wrong?”

“Seriously? What isn’t.” Huffing, Harry tossed back the sheets so he could swing his feet clear. “Starting with you. If you won’t leave, then I will.”

“Oh no you don’t,” Hermione snapped, whipping out her wand and hitting him with a Sticking Charm. “You are staying here and we are going to have an adult conversation. For as many times as you’ve complained about Ginny running away from her problems, you’re coming perilously close to the same behaviors.”

Shocked, Harry blinked up at her. “That’s not fair.” He tried to shift but his back was stuck to the wall by her spell.

“Life isn’t fair. Now, start talking.” She put her hands on her hips and looked down at him. “Why are you acting like this?”

Looking away, he crossed his arms over his wet shirt and scoffed. “Don’t bother pretending to care. You don’t really want to know. You’re too busy with your own life. No time for me anymore.”

“That’s not true. I know things have been crazy for us both lately, but you’re still my best friend. I’m being sincere here. Harry, I’m worried about you. This isn’t like you.”

“Shows what you know.” Meeting her eyes, he sneered. “You think we’re friends? You don’t know me at all. You believe in a lie.” She flinched, drawing back with hurt in her eyes. Getting a mean sort of satisfaction from it, Harry leaned forward and enunciated, “Newsflash, Hermione, I am a high-functioning addict. Bet you didn’t know that.” He sat back, feeling simultaneously smug and disgusted with himself. He could feel the alcohol and drugs still floating through his system.

Lips pressing tight, she looked him up and down. “You don’t look so high-functioning to me.”

“I’m hiding that,” Harry scowled. “That’s why I told them to call me Barry when I paid, stupid. If you can’t get the answer right, you should keep your trap shut. That’s why you weren’t popular.”

“Harry James,” she said fiercely, “stop being mean and calling me rude names just because you’re hurting. I don’t like it!”

After a minute of trying to match her glare, he had to look down and away, feeling ashamed. “I’m sorry,” he said grudgingly. He knew he was being a mean bastard, but couldn’t bring himself to stop the filth from escaping his lips. She deserved better.

Hermione looked down at Harry’s chest and tilted her head, frowning. “You still have my bookmark in your pocket. My bookmark probably smells like puke and alcohol now.”

Flushing, Harry crossed his arms. “That’s your fault. You spilled my last bottle on me.” And there he went again, being rude.

“My fault? Really?”

Harry sullenly kept his silence. He wouldn’t be able to be rude to her if she’d just go away.

Hermione looked ticked off. “Is that how you want to play it? Okay, fine.” She held out her hand. “Give it back to me then. Right now. I want to see it.”

Mouth dropping open, Harry slapped his palms flat over his pocket, overlapping them for good measure. “What?! No!”

“It’s mine and you’re acting like you can’t be trusted with it.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “Is that what’s going on? Can I not trust you anymore?”

Hurt, Harry frowned at her, reopening the split on his lip, worrying at it with his teeth. “Of course you can trust me. I-I kept it safe, see?” He gently took it out of his pocket and held out his hand to show her. “I put a little shield charm on it before I went out drinking and brawling. I always protect and take good care of the important things.”

“Then why don’t you take care of yourself?” she asked, voice pained. “Don’t you know how important you are to me?”

Opening and closing his mouth, Harry didn’t know how to answer that question. Instead he asked one of his own. “Are you really going to take it away from me?” He sucked on his lip, tasting the copper of fresh blood. His eyes felt bloodshot and his head was pounding. Everything ached. “I know it’s not really mine, it’s still yours,” he mumbled sadly.

Expression veiled by the tawny curls falling over her eyes, Hermione looked at the bookmark in silence for a beat before reaching out to take it. Harry’s stomach clenched and the bile of shame and despair rose in his throat. He wanted to cry out and jerk away, curling around the bookmark so it couldn’t be taken from him except by force, but at the end of the day the bookmark was still Hermione’s. It hurt, but he forced himself to hold still. Even if Hermione was ripping his heart out and abandoning him now, it was nothing less than he deserved.

However, Hermione surprised him (as she often did in all of the best of ways). Instead of taking the bookmark away, Hermione’s fingertip lightly slid down the length of it, dimpling the magical shield. Upon reaching the end of the bookmark, she curled her fingers around his and folded his hand closed around the bookmark, pushing it back to press against his chest over his heart.

“It seems like you’re still confused,” she said evenly. “This is mine and I’ll always return for it.” Hermione held his gaze, her warm brown eyes glowing in the sunlight spilling through the gap in the curtains, her hand a steady weight cradling Harry’s fist. “If I ask you to give it to me, it’s because I’m worried and I care.”

She was right about one thing—he was still confused, but that was okay because Hermione still trusted him. He had time to figure out everything else as long as he had Hermione.

A cloud moved over the sun, dimming the room. Leaning back, Hermione let her hand slide away. “Thank you for protecting my bookmark, but I wish you’d take equally good care of yourself, for me if not for yourself. You have James to think of too, now.”

She sighed and chewed on the corner of her lip. Pulling out a sober-up potion, she opened it and pressed it to his hands, helping him raise it to his lips. “Here, drink this.”

Swallowing it down, he grimaced and shuddered. “Ugh, that tastes worse than the alcohol.” Closing his eyes as it hit his stomach like a bomb, he gagged. It wasn’t reacting well with the extra pills and potions in his stomach.

“Do not throw that up!” she snapped, slapping a hand over his mouth. “I don’t have another one.”

Breathing shallowly, Harry pushed her hand away. “I’m fine. It’s fine.” He swallowed several more times. After a minute he could feel his head starting to clear as the foreign chemicals were becoming neutralized in his body. It wasn’t a pleasant sensation. “I’m okay.”

Eyes narrowing, she sat back. “So what happened to you to kick off this bender?”

Harry waved a hand, mouth working as he tried to give her a simple explanation that wouldn’t make her worry more. “It’s just bad right now because of my lack of sleep—the usual nightmares and a newborn baby who eats and poops every two to three hours. It’s not like Ginny’s gonna deal with that, so it’s up to me unless he’s with Molly. Then the kitchen sink broke and sprayed me with water just before I left for work on Friday, so I had to deal with that on top of the rest of it. I was late and got written up again. Plus the 3 AM raids I keep getting assigned to by the jerks at the office, though after I punched that duty officer—” stopping, Harry coughed into his hand. “Well, anyway. I’m fine. It’s fine. What day is it again?” He’d lost track.

“It’s Monday morning on January 12th,” she said crisply, watching him like she didn’t believe his admittedly bogus assurances.

Wincing, he realized that James had turned 3 months old this morning and he’d missed it. It made him feel awful. He equally missed how the drugs numbed the pain and shame. He knew it was messed up, but he didn’t know what to do about that either.

Looking away to avoid Hermione’s piercing gaze, Harry realized he didn’t recognize the room. He must’ve really been out of it. Harry saw piles of crushed muggle beer cans, empty firewhisky bottles, and open wrappers from the illegal pill-pushers on Knockturn Alley. Alcohol and pills had been getting him through his days lately, but it was taking more and more to keep him going. There were probably a few of those experimental potion bottles he’d seized in that last raid under the bed too. He vaguely recalled taking them all last night…or rather the night before. Had he really lost all of Sunday in a drug-induced haze? At least Molly had dragged Ginny and baby James to visit Bill’s family for the weekend, so they shouldn’t have noticed a problem yet.

He winced at the state of the stained carpet, dingy walls with mysterious yellow-brown spatters, and water stained ceiling.

If he was lucky, Hermione hadn’t realized the worst of it either. Maybe she was too distracted by how disgusting the room was to see all the evidence of his varied sins. It made him uncomfortable seeing her in a place like this. She deserved better. “You should leave me here and go. This isn’t a nice place for you,” he said.

“I’m not leaving you, Harry,” she said. “Besides, my bookmark’s still here.” Flashing him a determined smile, she sat on the edge of the bed daintily, pushing away the corner of the crusty, sweat-stained sheet. “Since you’re stuck to the wall until I’m satisfied, keep talking. I can tell you’re still holding back. What else?” she asked. Reaching into her purse, she pulled out a bottle of dittany and began to apply it to his swollen face. “C’mon, I know there’s more. Lay it on me.”

“It’s too much. I’m too much,” Harry mumbled, closing his eyes as she dipped her fingers into the dittany and gently ran them around his eyes and the throbbing place on the edge of his jaw. “You shouldn’t touch me. I’m disgusting and dirty.”

“That’s true,” she said in agreement, making him want to shrink down into a worm. “But you don’t have to stay that way. You can change. We’re all dirty in different ways. Some are just more obvious than others.” Licking the corner of her handkerchief to wet it, she held his jaw still and scrubbed his nose, mouth, and chin clean before folding it over and drying the skin, then dabbing dittany on the split lip he’d already forgotten about. It was a sign of their comfort with each other and long friendship that he didn’t even think to squirm away.

“Leave it alone, Hermione. I’m not worth the trouble.”

“I’ll decide that for myself,” she said tartly. “Stop stalling and talk to me. I want to help.” Her voice turned wry. “I can’t say I won’t judge, but I do promise to judge in your favor. You know I’ll do everything I can to help. My track record speaks to that, doesn’t it? Can’t you trust me?”

“I do, it’s just…” Harry trailed off, the words getting plugged up in his chest. “I’m okay.”

Taking his hands in her warm palms, Hermione rubbed the healing potion into the scabbed and broken skin on his knuckles. “What is it you don’t think you can talk about? You can tell me,” she coaxed, rolling up his sleeves and massaging the potion up his forearms and over the fresh purple-black bruises layered over the old bruises of yellow and green from all of the fights he’d been seeking out lately.

Harry could feel the potion starting to work as the plethora of surface pains he’d become inured to started to disappear, reminding him that constant pain wasn’t normal. Part of him whimsically felt like the true magic wasn’t in the medicine coating her fingers but in her caring touch.

Returning the dittany to her bag, she sat back with her hands open in her lap. “Please, Harry,” she begged. Her eyelashes cast whiskery shadows over the familiar freckles on her cheeks when she looked down at his silence, chewing on her cheek and obviously trying to decide what to say next. She looked lost.

And Harry—who’d been feeling so lost and alone himself—unexpectedly surrendered. (Though really it had been inevitable with Hermione.)

“I am not okay,” he said, the words scraping painfully out of his throat as he pulled each syllable from the depths with Herculean effort. “I am not okay, Hermione.”

“It’s going to be alright,” she said.

“No, no it’s not,” Harry said, feeling lost and defeated. “You don’t understand. It’s been…difficult lately. Or…for a while, actually. A few years. Or more. I guess my whole life has been one big string of traumas. I thought being an adult would be better, or married and part of a big family, but…I don’t feel better. I thought it would fix me…but it didn’t. And I just keep getting worse.”

“Good,” Hermione said bracingly.

“What?” Shocked, Harry looked at her, feeling betrayed.

“Admitting you have a problem and identifying it is the first step. You’re doing well. Keep going.” She smiled encouragingly.

Snorting, he shook his head and threaded his fingers together in his lap. “Right so, I was so excited to have kids and so happy when James was born, but,” mouth working silently, he closed his eyes and finally confessed in a tortured whisper, “I think Ginny doesn’t like our baby, but no one seems concerned about it but me. Molly said she’d speak to Ginny about it but nothing’s improved. Also, I don’t,” he sucked in a shaky breath, “I don’t think Ginny likes me anymore. All we do is fight. She’s never happy and I don’t know how to fix her. She doesn’t want me to fix her.” His throat hurt as he spoke each barbed truth.

“It’s not your job to fix her, Harry. All you can do is fix yourself,” Hermione said.

He shrugged. “Well, I think Molly’s starting to suspect that I’m a horrible husband and father, though instead of helping when she catches me struggling she just makes me feel worse. I swear I’m doing my best, but I’m not sure how much longer I can cope with all the family expectations and overtime at work, not to mention the constant stress of caring for a newborn and keeping the house up. Ginny’s never really around anymore and when she is she’s unhappy and making things even more difficult.”

Brow furrowing, Hermione said, “I’m sorry. That sounds hard. Is there more?” she prompted gently.

Harry pinched the skin between his thumb and forefinger, focusing on the pain. “Yeah,” he grunted. “I’m exhausted all of the time, but I can’t sleep because of the nightmares. Lately I only feel anxious or angry or miserable and it’s impossible to meet everyone’s expectations. I don’t know how much longer I can keep doing this. Until I die, I guess, but it’s too early for me to die and too many people depend on me to be the strong one and that’s exhausting too. It’s too big for me. I feel powerless,” he said helplessly.

Making a sympathetic sound, Hermione put a hand on his knee and squeezed. “I’m sorry. That’s rough.”

Releasing his stinging skin, he shoved his hands through his hair and clenched them behind his neck. His eyes were burning but he bared his teeth to fight back the tears, choosing anger over despair. “I’m losing myself and it makes me—so—bloody—furious! I hate feeling like this! But what do I do? It’s too much. Drinking helped at first, but now it’s just one more problem to hide and deal with. I keep picking fights and being a git to everyone and-and most of my old friends aren’t speaking to me anymore and I kind of deserve it, but I can’t stop,” he sucked in a wet breath, “and then my boss suspended me on Friday and I probably deserve that too, so that’s one more fantastic thing I have to worry about now.” He gave a dark laugh. “I’m drinking more often than not, using harder drugs and illegal potions to numb the pain and get through the day, but the day just keeps getting longer and harder to get through and being wasted is becoming a wasted effort. It doesn’t solve anything. I’m an expert at pretending I’m okay, but something’s going to break soon and I think it’s going to be me. I feel so alone, holding on for dear life.”

“Oh, Harry, I’m so sorry,” Hermione said, eyes shiny with sympathy, tears trembling on the edge of falling.

Despite his best efforts to hold back, seeing her about to cry made him break and tears escaped to streak down his cheeks. “I’m so ashamed,” he said wretchedly, covering his face with his hands and turning away, wishing he could disappear but his wand was too far away and his back was still stuck to the wall. “And to make it all worse, my baby turned three months old today and I was too wasted to be there. I love James so much and I just want him to grow up loved and with adults he can trust and feel safe with. I don’t want him to be like me. I’m such a f-failure and it hurts like hell.”

Cancelling the sticking charm, Hermione pulled Harry into her arms. “Oh, Harry, you’re going to make it through this, I promise. Everything’s going to be alright. We’re going to find a way to fix this together, but first, I want you to know that you aren’t alone. As your best friend, I’m always going to be here, okay?”

She hugged him tightly and Harry felt fresh tears trickle down his cheeks. “Okay,” he whispered.

After hugging in silence for several moments, Hermione said, “You know, this reminds me of something American car maker Henry Ford once said, ‘Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.’ You aren’t a failure, Harry, or at least not a complete one.”

It made him snort a laugh through his tears. “Gee, thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” she said with false gravity.

“Well, I guess if an American said it, it must be true,” he said sardonically.

Drying her cheek off on the shoulder of Harry’s shirt, Hermione sniffed to clear her nose. “I can give you a British quote instead, but I don’t think you’ll like it as much. Muggle Prime Minister Winston Churchill said, ‘Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.’ It’s good advice, but the bit about enthusiasm somehow makes me think of the Creevy brothers, which then makes me feel a mixture of sadness and phantom annoyance. Not quite the panacea I was going for.”

“Ah yes,” Harry said as she rubbed soothing circles on his back. It felt good. “Well, I’m sure you’ll figure out a quote both British and situationally appropriate,” he paused to lift his head from where it was resting on her shoulder so she could catch his deadpan expression, “eventually.”

“You laugh,” she said ominously, dropping her hands, “but you should know better than to challenge me.”

Heaving a sigh, Harry sat back on his heels. “Consider me duly warned.”

“I have one already. Poet Charles Churchill said, “Be England what she will. With all her faults, she is my country still.’” Hermione poked his side. “ I love you. With all your faults, you are my friend still, Harry. Forever.”

Before he could feel too happy about what she’d just said, Hermione opened her mouth and added, “Though you’ve really messed up big this time. The stuff with Ginny isn’t your fault, but the rest of it is. Fighting, drugs, and getting fired? Severe depression is also no joke and you probably have PTSD. I wish you’d have told me you were feeling this way a long time ago instead of trying to do everything on your own and then turning into a miserable, self-sabotaging junkie.” She waved her hands furiously as she talked. “That’s always been one of your biggest problems. You procrastinate asking for help until the eleventh hour and then things are always overly dramatic and we barely have any time for making plans, much less a proper cup of cocoa or tea.”

“Gee, Hermione, tell me how you really feel. Also, your recent obsession with tea is starting to get worrisome. Since we graduated it’s almost as bad as your previous obsession with homework. I thought you were supposed to be making me feel better, not criticizing me,” Harry said, scowling.

“I never said I wasn’t full of problems too, but we’re focusing on you right now, so hush. I am going to help you feel better, but that’s going to take time and extensive planning. This is a stop-gap intervention that is starting,” sliding off the bed onto her feet, she moved to the bathroom, poked her head inside, and then nodded in satisfaction, “now.” She turned back to him. “They have soap and towels. You go and take a shower so you stop smelling like the back end of a troll. I’ll find you some clean clothes and some food to help settle your stomach, and then we’ll go and make an appointment.”

“What? Where?” Eyes narrowing, Harry pulled himself upright, holding onto the wall to make sure he kept his feet. Even with the sober-up potion, he still felt unsteady. It probably wasn’t strong enough to flush everything he’d poured into his system. Hopefully the shower would help. He hadn’t been this sober in longer than he cared to remember and he wasn’t sure he liked it.

Hermione folded her arms. “With problems like yours, we’re going to need a miracle, Harry. There’s only one place to reliably find those.”

“Where?” he demanded again, getting more worried.

“Church, Harry. The chapel near one of my favorite libraries has a signboard advertising Addiction Recovery meetings every Monday evening. Today is a Monday.”

“Are you kidding me? No. Hermione, don’t be ridiculous.” Harry crossed his arms and shook his head. “No. Besides, since when did you start believing in religion?” He scoffed.

“I’m not being ridiculous, Harry, I’m being practical. The wizarding world woefully lacks a decent mental health system or any comprehensive therapy for addiction to harmful substances beyond short-term potions that only address the physical symptoms and not the underlying psychological and social causes. Many muggle churches have successful, evidence-based track records of helping people learn to overcome addiction and maintain sobriety, with the best outcomes in those programs focusing on cognitive behavior therapy and reliance on a higher power. The one I’m thinking about mentioned those techniques in particular on their bulletin board adverts at the library. You don’t have to be a member of their church to go and, bonus, the program is free and confidential.”

Wrinkling his nose, Harry gave a grudging nod. “I guess I can see why you chose that one.” He was sick of himself and if Hermione thought it would help, he should give it a shot. Nothing he was doing on his own seemed to be working, but… “In a church? Really?” Religion made him think of hypocrites like the Dursleys, who only went to church so they could look down on their neighbors and remind Harry he was damned and going to hell.

“While there are also secular programs with good outcomes, I don’t know of any off the top of my head and would need more time to research. They also probably aren’t free if you just walk in. I don’t want to wait to get you help. We can always switch later if the church environment isn’t a good fit for you.”

Licking her lips, Hermione tucked her hair behind her ears. “As for believing in religion, I haven’t attended church since I was a kid,” she raised her chin and took a breath, “but my parents did raise me to believe in a God of love, justice, and mercy, and though I’ve struggled with some of the concepts over the years, I find that I still have faith. I’ve gone through too much in my life not to believe that there’s a power out there bigger and smarter than me creating order from all the chaos.”

“I thought you were too practical for religion,” Harry said, uncomfortable.

She shrugged wryly. “Growing up, when people didn’t understand how something worked, they’d say it must be magic. It always made me want to roll my eyes. But just when I started giving up on my parents’ church and the idea of God, souls, ghosts, life after death, and anything I couldn’t prove without science and hard facts, I discovered that magic was real.” She huffed out a laugh and shook her head at herself.

“You know how much I hate being wrong, but studying magic has often made me question my assumptions. I’ve now seen evidence that ghosts and souls are real, and you told me about communicating with spirits after death like Cedric, your parents, and even Dumbledore. I’ve also read first-hand accounts of interactions and bargains with what are effectively god-like entities in other cultures who are bound by a higher, holier law and receive consequences from a higher power if they break it. I’ve been humbled enough over the years to realize that I don’t know everything and that the things I see that defy reason often have an explanation I just haven’t discovered yet.”

She shrugged and gave him a crooked smile. “After all that, the idea of God being real doesn’t seem like such a stretch. In thinking about it over the years, I’ve come to find comfort in the idea of an all-knowing, compassionate God who wants to help us succeed, has a plan, and created a world of order with rules and consequences, and that we’re here to be tested so we can learn, grow, and evolve before our spirits return home to live with him again as better, more enlightened people. I like rules and order, and I like even more the idea that someone loves me enough to hope and wait for my return and is willing to sacrifice to make that happen. I’m hoping you’ll find it comforting too, and if not, at least not too distracting in your 12-step addiction recovery program.”

“I don’t know…I guess it can’t hurt to try,” he said slowly, though already his mind was crowding with doubts.

“Please, Harry,” she took a pained breath and wiped her eyes, “I need you to do more than try. I need you to succeed. I need you to fight to get better. I’m scared and I don’t know what else to do. I don’t like seeing you like this. It hurts me too.” She pressed a hand against her chest and stared at him pleadingly with glossy eyes.

Her sincere words made Harry’s swelling excuses shrivel and deflate. “I’m sorry. Okay, I’ll go and I’ll try to keep an open mind. I’ll do it.”

She nodded. “Good. Just remember that you aren’t alone in this. You’ll always have me by your side, even if you don’t believe in a higher power like God. Now,” she clapped her hands briskly, “we need to get you help with this as soon as possible, before something even worse happens. I can brew you potions to help with the physical cravings and withdrawal symptoms, help watch the baby, clean your house, yell at Ginny, deflect Molly, and even try to smooth things over for you at work and with your mates, but,” she wrung her hands, “I can’t make you feel happier or want to be less self-destructive. I can’t fix you, Harry, no matter how much I want to. You have to do the work for that on your own. The meetings are just a way to give you the tools to make yourself the person you want to be.”

Taking a breath, Harry walked over to the bathroom, pausing in the door to look back at Hermione. “Then I guess I better get started with that shower,” he said, making Hermione give him a small but genuine smile. “And bring me back a sausage and egg sandwich with the clean clothing.”

“You got it,” she beamed at him, sending him a salute. The evidence of her tears still showed in the red around her eyes. He could only imagine how ravaged his face looked, much less the rest of him. It was time he took that first step to start cleaning himself up. It would be nice to be able to look in the mirror again and like the person staring back at him.

Hermione turned to go and then stopped. “Harry?”

“Yeah?”

“I really do love you,” she said with a tremulous smile that simultaneously broke and healed his heart.

“I love you, too,” he said, meaning it more than anything. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

Smile getting bigger, she nodded and pulled out her wand. “I’ll be back soon,” she promised.

“You better,” he said. “Or I’ll come and find you.”

∞⌛∞

~Narrator~

Even heroes struggle, dear readers. Feeling broken can happen to the best of us. It can happen to everyone. Sometimes we get knocked down. Sometimes we make mistakes. Sometimes everything feels horrible and hopeless, or gray and numb.

Don’t give up.

Please.

Feeling negative emotions is normal, but we don’t have to let ourselves live there. We don’t have to let it steal our present and our future. The wonderful thing about life is that change is inevitable. It happens even faster when you help it along and keep your head raised, searching and striving for it. There is grace to be found if we can humble ourselves and ask for help. ‘It’s okay to feel sad sometimes, but little by little, you’ll feel better again.’ Friends and neighbors can help. Time moves on. Feelings shift. Wounds scab over. Lessons are learned and we find the strength to heal. We can get up and try again, knowing we did the best we could with what we knew before while committing to do better with what we know now. We can make different—better—choices. The path may take time and effort, it may be winding and full of potholes and speed bumps instead of a straight smooth climb to the peak, but something better and brighter is out there for all of us, even if we can’t quite see the shape of it through the fog.

You can do hard things.

You can.

I believe in you!

Just like Harry believes in Hermione and vice versa.

Well, okay, that might be a bit of an exaggeration. As an omniscient narrator, I do believe in your potential for happiness and greatness. I’d even go so far as to say that you’re a lovely person even though we’ve never personally met. You’ve read the story this far without giving up, haven’t you? And found yourself enjoying the journey as it unfolds? That shows that you have great discernment and a sterling character.

You’re even going to leave the author a supportive comment at the bottom of the page, aren’t you? See? I knew I liked you.

All that being said, we have not defeated a mountain troll together in a bathroom, nor spent years being codependent—to my great loss, I’m sure. You’ve also never threatened to come and find me if I don’t come back soon.

(That isn’t a request. Please don’t threaten me. I don’t like it and my husband will get roaring angry and I’m small but vicious and scary things will happen and nobody wants to see that.)

For most of us, saying, “You better [come back] or I’ll come and find you,” isn’t done to be upsetting. Usually, it’s said in a joking tone to reinforce positive friendship feelings and isn’t meant to be taken literally. However, if you think that Harry was just being polite when he said those words to Hermione, please take a moment to sit down and brace yourself for a spoiler alert, as you’re going to be very shocked by future story arcs and I don’t want to exacerbate any underlying mental or medical conditions.

Are you ready?

Alright, here we go: First, let us clarify that the relationship and love shared between Harry and Hermione is not romantic in canon or in the current timeline of our story, though in later (much later) timelines all bets are off. Right now their love is epic and sweeping and, if you insist on making me define it in a single word (how mean)—platonic. If and when romance shows up, there will be zero infidelity or cheating. None. Romance won’t be seen for a long time, however. Their romantic relationship is so slow burn that everyone has to die at least twice more in this series before it shows up—at least—so don’t hold your breath or you’ll pass out and I’ll feel bad while also being rudely judgy about it. However, once romance does arrive, you can sigh, gasp, pant, coo, or breathe heavily however you’d like.

You do you.

Circling back to Harry’s last words, when Harry told Hermione, “I’ll come and find you,” he wasn’t just saying that to be polite, Harry was being serious. He was being DEATHLY serious. He was giving Hermione a threat and a warning and the universe an ultimatum. He was telling her, “I will find you! No matter how long it takes, no matter how far. I will find you!” Even in a place with no frontiers. That vow was not hyperbole. If someday Hermione did not come back, if she was taken from him, Harry would not quietly accept it. He would do whatever it took to get her back, including things that, taken out of context or viewed only partly finished, might label him as insane or the greatest evil ever known, though in Harry’s defence death is technically a neutral and natural force.

Speaking of which, we haven’t seen any death in quite a few chapters. Perhaps it’s time to change that, and by change, I mean change it a lot. After all, anything worth doing is worth doing well!

But before we get to that, weren’t you going to leave the author a supportive comment?

I knew I liked you.

∞⌛∞

Chapter 6:

∞⌛∞

∞2012, August 18—The Burrow∞

~Hermione Weasley (32)~

With only a crescent moon to light the backyard of the Burrow during the family’s end of summer party, the Weasleys had set strings of lights to hover over the long trestle tables. The August night felt warm and in the distance glow-worms flitted through the trees and across the field used by the family as a Quidditch pitch. Different members of the extended Weasley family were spread throughout the property, some inside the main house and others sprawled around the tables out back.

Hermione wished she knew where her children were, but she was stuck in a corner of the backyard keeping a drunk Ginny from wandering off on Molly’s orders after Harry had gone inside to set up the beds for all of the kids. Hopefully her children were with him and helping. Molly had decided last minute that all of her grandkids were going to stay the night with her and have breakfast in the morning, no matter what plans their parents had made otherwise. Hermione hadn’t wanted the children to stay late, much less overnight, but as usual she was overruled. Molly always got her way.

Being Molly Weasley’s daughter-in-law was a little like being treated like a not-particularly bright servant. The older woman was constantly correcting her behavior and ordering her around, making her adjust furniture, fetch drinks, and clean up after the men and children, rarely allowing her to sit down for long until it was time to go to bed. When they slept over at the Burrow, the kids always stayed up way past their bedtime and got hopped up on sugar, turning into overtired, emotional, and badly-behaved wrecks, sometimes with the added bonus of projectile vomiting. It always took at least two days for them to return to normal.

Poor little Hugo at almost six was particularly sensitive and became easily overwrought when his sleep schedule changed. Hermione had offered to let the older Rose stay and just take Hugo home early, but Ron and his mother had refused to allow it since Lily was staying and she was his same age. Lily got just as overstimulated, but Molly had already won that argument with Harry and Ginny.

Parties were hard on Harry. He still struggled with the desire to drink after his brush with addiction years ago when his oldest son James was born, but he’d vowed to stay clean and sober for himself and his children and had turned his life around for the better. Hermione had stopped drinking in support, discovering that after only a few months she didn’t even miss it and had more spare cash to spend on books to boot. The Weasleys didn’t think it was that big of a deal to drink to excess and always had lots of alcohol around. It would be one thing if people kept their heads or only drank in moderation, but the Weasleys never did. There were always lots of drunken fights and arguments at family parties and it seemed like most of the adults took a dollop of whisky or other illicit potion with their coffee the next morning to get through the day, always with an excuse about how their lives were so hard and their pasts too depressing and traumatic to get through sober. Ginny, Ron, and George would compete to see who could drink more hard liquor at get-togethers—though Charlie was the winner when he was around—and they all kept trying to trick Harry into drinking too despite his refusals.

Hermione did her best to block them, but it was infuriating. She was proud of Harry for choosing to remove himself from temptation by going inside and helping with the kids. She just wished she could have joined him inside instead of being forced to babysit the adult Ginny out here.

“You and I are the unlucky ones,” Ginny slurred, leaning back against the table as she looked up at the moon. Lifting a bottle, she took a swig. Hermione thought Molly had taken Ginny’s alcohol away when she left, so she wasn’t sure where the bottle had come from.

“Because we’re stuck at this family party or because we’re stuck together?” Hermione said bitterly under her breath, stacking the dirty cups and plates on the table for easier cleanup.

Ginny still heard her. “Because we’re stuck with family,” she said with emphasis, tossing a look at Hermione over her shoulder. “You know, kids.”

“I like my kids,” Hermione said repressively, not interested in Ginny’s complaints and negativity, but as usual her wants were ignored.

“I wish I was like my friends who were smart enough to never have kids or get married,” Ginny whined. “Unfortunately, sex with Harry was just too tempting to resist and he wouldn’t sleep with me if I didn’t marry him. He can be just as stodgy as my parents in that way.”

“Ginny, shut up,” Hermione said curtly, not wanting to think about Harry and sex. Harry was her brother in this life and closest friend. She had very firm boundaries around how she allowed herself to think about Harry and that was exceeding it.

Ginny ignored her. “Or maybe he didn’t want to risk me getting pregnant and aborting his kid. I dunno,” she took another drink and then smirked and wagged her eyebrows. “Harry really is a god in bed, just so giving and needy and yummy.” She shivered. “The sex might’ve been worth the monogamy and commitment if I hadn’t been forced to become a mother. ” She sighed gustily and belched. “But Mum kept dosing me with fertility potions every time I was forced to visit and they proved to be too potent for my standard birth control potions, no matter how many precautions I tried to take. You know what I mean. It was the same for you.”

Hermione gritted her teeth. “Ginny, stop talking.”

“Not that my kids aren’t awesome little gremlins and better than yours. How could they not be with a mom like me versus parents like you and Ron?” She grimaced and stuck out her tongue. “I love the brats, I just don’t want to have to take care of them all the time. It’s too much effort. I mean, I don’t even like being around kids, not even my own.”

“It’s a little late for that now,” Hermione snapped, offended on everyone’s behalf.

Ginny huffed and tossed back her hair, sloshing alcohol over her shirt. “Don’t be so judgemental. You didn’t want to turn into my mum either, didja? I’m a powerful and liberated woman. I never wanted a life like this. I wanted adventure and travel. I wanted freedom and fun. Instead, I’m stuck here, spending my summers at home with a husband who works nights and weekends more often than not and lots of snotty little kids and stupid relatives.” She took another drink, starting to slur again. “It’s not fair. I’m stuck getting drunk alone in a corner with a swot like you instead of at a brill party in a glamorous foreign city full of friends and dancing and fun.”

Hermione would sympathize with Ginny a lot more if Ginny wasn’t such a self-centered bitch. “Newsflash, Ginny, I don’t want to be stuck here with you either.” She was proud of herself for biting her tongue and not saying the slew of insults and criticisms brewing in her belly.

Ginny hadn’t been this selfish and cruel at school, at least not as Hermione remembered, though she’d always been spoiled and carried the shadow of her first year’s trauma and the diary’s manipulations. However, living at Hogwarts under Death Eater rule had broken something already cracked in Ginny. It had also damaged her capacity for empathy and taught her to look the other way and put herself first. A decent percentage of the students who’d survived that hellish school year had turned out that way. The difference was that other people got help and tried to get better. Not Ginny. By the end of the war, Ginny was fighting more for revenge and spite than to help those who couldn’t help themselves or to save others. It had taken time for the changes to become clear and by then it was too late. Ginny had become unrepentantly self-centered, with loyalty and love only for herself.

It was obvious Ginny was unhappy and hurting. Hermione had tried to be kind and help her, but had been met with nothing but personal attacks and scorn. It had ruined their friendship. As far as Hermione could tell, Ginny didn’t want to get better. She just wanted to be given money with no strings attached and otherwise left alone to do what she wanted, when she wanted. If she’d had financial independence, she’d have taken off without a backwards glance. Unfortunately, she didn’t have the discipline to keep from spending her money as soon as she got it and Harry had learned the hard way to not give her open access to his accounts unless he wanted to risk not having enough money to pay the bills or buy food for the kids (that had been a tense couple of months).

Ignoring Hermione’s words, Ginny tipped her bottle upside-down and frowned when only a few drops came out. She looked around. “Where’d the other bottles go?”

“You’re already drunk. You don’t need more,” Hermione said curtly.

Ginny slammed down her bottle on the table, making Hermione jump. “Fine! But I’m just sayin’, it isn’t fair, innit? I never wanted to be like this. I had so much potential. I deserved better. Then I got shackled by marriage and kids. Sometimes I just want to hop on my broom and never come back, leave them all behind.”

“You want to leave us?” Lily’s small, high-pitched voice piped up from behind them.

Eyes closing and heart dropping, Hermione spun around, praying she’d just imagined it. Instead, she was dismayed to look out and see multiple little faces peeking around the corner of the house, including all of Ginny’s and her children as well as other cousins, watching and listening to Ginny’s rant.

James put his arm around Lily’s shoulder when she started to cry and pulled her close, his voice wobbling as he asked his mom, “Are you going to divorce Daddy and leave us?” Tears started dripping down his cheeks too and soon all of the kids were crying. Several ran off, hopefully to find their parents.

“Noooo,” Ginny whined, throwing her head back and rubbing her face with her hands. “I’m not drunk enough to deal wi’ this.”

“Too bad.” Hermione kicked her in the shin vindictively. “You’re their mother. Act like it.”

Leaving Ginny behind, Hermione moved to the children and knelt down, gathering as many as she could into her arms. “It’s alright, guys. Calm down. We’re all fine. Aunt Ginny didn’t mean that the way it sounded. She’s just drunk.” She threw a glare over her shoulder. “Right?”

Heaving a big sigh, Ginny turned to the kids and pasted a wide, fake smile on her face. “That’s right, don’t worry about anything I just said. It was all a joke, alright? I’m not leaving you or divorcing Harry. I can’t afford it anyway. Oh look, there he is. Hi, honey!” Ginny waved her arm in the air, ignoring or not seeing the temper carving lines in Harry’s face and the muscle throbbing at the hinge of his jaw as he sped up to join them, looking between her and the crying children.

“What happened?” He asked, voice overly controlled.

“The kids need you. You should take them inside,” Ginny said, waving and giving an exaggerated nod.

“I’ll come with you and help,” Hermione said quietly, leaving Ginny to her own devices. The children were more important.

“Yeah, you do that, mini-Molly,” Ginny said meanly under her breath.

“Ginny,” Harry snapped with a warning look.

Looking irritated, Ginny plopped down onto a bench and faced away, crossing her arms and glaring out into the distance over the dark trees lit by blinking glow-worms.

Ignoring her dramatics, Hermione focused on the children. She had to call on all of her reserves of strength to boost the sniffling Lily and Hugo up onto each hip with a grunt, their long legs dangling down to her calves. At six they were getting too big to pick up. She was only strong enough to get them into the front room, but by the time she collapsed onto the couch, Harry and the rest of the kids were there. Fleur, Angelina, and the other parents collected their children while Hermione caught her breath, and then Harry and Hermione managed to distract their kids with games and silliness so they stopped sniffling and started smiling again.

When Harry took his kids upstairs for a private moment before bed, Hermione took hers outside to a bench out front, stargazing as she cuddled with Rose and Hugo.

“Mom, can I ask you a question?” Rose said, winding her nightgown around her finger.

“I don’t know, can you?” Hermione said, arching her brow.

“Mo-om!”

Hermione smirked. “Go ahead.”

“Have you ever…ever talked to dad about getting divorced?” Rose asked, her voice going soft.

“No! You can’t get ‘vorced!” Hugo cried, face red as he banged a little fist against her chest. “No no no!” Abruptly he collapsed forward onto her lap and started crying. “I’ll be a good boy, I pwomise. Pease, mommy, pease. Don’t leave us.” His speech still regressed when he got upset.

“Shh, I won’t. Calm down, sweetheart. Calm down.” Rubbing a hand over his back, Hermione took a deep breath and hugged Rose too, pulling Hugo up to lean against her chest. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“You pwomise?” Hugo asked, knuckling his eyes and looking up at her trustingly.

“Yes, I promise. Your father and I love you very much. You don’t need to worry. Nothing is more important to me than you and your happiness.”

Rose looked around before leaning up to her mom’s ear to whisper, “What about Uncle Harry?”

Hermione felt a funny twisting in her chest, but forced a light laugh and told them the truth. “Your Uncle Harry is a very close second, but you kids will always come first. He knows that and feels the same way.”

“What about Dad?” Hugo asked innocently. “Where’s he?”

Before Hermione had to answer, Ron’s voice called out from the front door. “Time for bed. Grandma’s going to start chasing people inside if they aren’t under their blankets in five minutes.”

Hermione wasn’t ready to go inside and felt the children needed more soothing. “We’re doing some family stargazing and snuggling,” she said, giving him a speaking look. “We’ll come in soon when we’re done.”

“Come sit by me, Dad,” Rose said with a sweet smile. “I can show you where the Big Dipper is!”

“Daddy, by me!” Hugo cried, bouncing and reaching out with his chubby little hands.

“Yes, Ron, come join us,” Hermione said. “I think it best that—”

“No!” Ron snapped loudly, cutting his hand through the air and not moving away from the door. “I’m tired and not arguing about this with you. My mother said it’s time to go in, Hermione, no matter what you think is best.” He rolled his eyes. “Everyone knows she knows what children need better than you ever will, no matter how many books you read. For Merlin’s sake, you don’t have to argue about everything just to prove you’re a bloody know-it-all.”

Pressing her lips flat, Hermione took a slow breath in through her nose and blew it out, forcing her body to relax instead of clench up. Both children were sitting hunched and frozen where they pressed against her sides. They didn’t respond well to Ron raising his voice. She didn’t like it either, but at least she was used to it. The entire interaction made her heart ache, but there was no use arguing with Ron or Molly at this time of night. Thankfully children were resilient.

It would be fine. Sometimes that felt like her life mantra. She wasn’t okay, but everything was going to be alright. Somehow.

“I don’t want to argue. We’ll come inside, but you and I should talk more about this later,” she said evenly, gently tugging the children to their feet.

“Yeah, sure, whatever,” Ron said impatiently, gesturing them inside. She could smell the alcohol on his breath as she moved past. He stopped at the base of the stairs and watched with his arms folded as she took the kids up, only turning and walking away after they’d reached the first landing.

After Hermione got the children’s teeth brushed and tucked them into their shared bed with a kiss each, she moved to the other side of the room and pressed extra kisses on the heads of little James, Albus, and Lily for good measure.

They could all use more love tonight.

∞⌛∞

∞2016, August 5—Home of Harry and Ginny Weasley∞

~Harry Potter (36)~

Bursting out from between the tall hedges, Harry saw the Triwizard Cup just up ahead. To the side he saw Cedric stumble out at the same time. They looked at each other and then back at the cup, illuminated by the magical lanterns glowing overhead. Harry felt conflicted. He wanted to win, but he also didn’t want to steal the win from the older boy.

“Together?” James asked, stepping out and moving towards the cup with Albus and Lily at his heels. Cedric was gone, replaced by Harry’s children. The boys bounded ahead.

“C’mon, Daddy,” Lily said, grabbing Harry’s hand and dragging him forward to join her brothers by the cup. A voice began shouting in the back of Harry’s mind, but he was too focused on keeping up with Lily’s short but speedy legs.

“All of us on three?” Albus suggested, looking to his father for approval.

“Great idea,” Harry said, ruffling his hair.

“One, two, three—” they all grabbed onto the cup and were sucked away by the portkey, landing in a sprawl. They were in a dark graveyard. The cup went rolling to the side.

Pushing himself up onto his knees in the grass, Harry shoved his glasses back onto his face and looked around as his children groaned and rose to their feet using the nearby gravestones for support.

James wrapped his arms around himself and shivered. “I don’t like this place.”

“Me neither,” Albus said.

“Daddy, I’m scared,” Lily whispered, face white and lips trembling.

“Do you have a plan to survive this?” Hermione asked, stepping out from behind a tall stone angel. “We’re not safe here.”

Dread pooled in Harry’s gut.

“Kill the spares,” said a voice out of the darkness.

Horrified, Harry shook his head. “No, wait, please, not my children, not Hermione, no—”

Poison green light briefly illuminated the nearby tombstones as the Killing Curse struck Hermione, followed by James, Albus, and Lily. They all fell to the ground. Dead.

“NOoooooooo!” Harry scrambled forward on his hands and knees, pulling Lily’s body into his lap and Hermione’s limp arm to his face. “Please, no, please!!!” They were already ice cold. On the ground nearby, Albus’s blank eyes stared at him accusingly. James was sprawled facedown over his brother’s legs from where he’d tried to step in front of Albus and protect him. All dead. Screaming hysterically, Harry reached for them to drag them closer, looking around for something to make it untrue, but it was too late. Harry was useless and weak. He’d failed to protect them. Only he was left, useless and alone as always.

Letting go of the bodies, Harry’s anguish turned to rage. Pulling out the Elder Wand, Harry jumped to his feet and raced through the graveyard towards the bonfire up ahead, his invisibility cloak streaming from his shoulders and the ring bouncing on a chain against his chest. “You’re DEAD! I’m going to rip your soul from your body and torture it in the depths of hell for a thousand years!”

Bursting out into the clearing, Harry immediately cast a Cutting Curse at Pettigrew, slicing his body into pieces with blades of magic, but his anguish remained unslaked as the traitor died without time to even whimper.

Eyes burning from his tears, teeth bared in a grimace, Harry turned to the deformed baby in the cauldron. “You want immortality, Tom? Death grants you your wish. Tom Riddle, I damn you to eternal suffering!” Raising his wand, Harry—

—woke up to a pillow repeatedly beating him around the head.

“Whuh?” Blearily Harry yanked the pillow away, fisting it in his hands as he looked up into the angry face of his wife. “Stoppit,” he slurred, feeling disoriented. It hurt to breathe, the nightmare still felt so close, the dark graveyard behind his eyes each time he blinked. “The children?”

Standing above him next to the bed, Ginny rolled her eyes and huffed. “Them? What about me? The children are down the hall and can sleep through your shouting and grunting. I wish I was so lucky.” Ginny crossed her arms and scowled down at him. “What is your problem? It’s bad enough I have to put up with your usual tossing and turning, but now you’ve ruined my entire weekend by making me hear HIS name. You’re such a bloody git.”

Ginny huffed and walked over to flick on the overhead lights. Harry winced at the painful brightness, squinting but afraid to close his eyes and be back in that awful place. Pain he chose was always easier, though Hermione hated it when he hurt himself. Remembering the grounding tools he’d learned when he used to attend addiction recovery meetings, Harry forced himself to take slow, deep breaths and listed 5 things he could see, 4 things he could touch, 3 things he could hear, 2 things he could smell, and 1 thing he could taste.

As he worked on calming down and putting the trauma of the nightmare behind him, Ginny stomped to her dresser, grabbed a bag off the top, dumped the dirty clothes out onto the floor, and stuffed in several clean changes of clothes. “You should be over this by now. Why aren’t you taking a dreamless sleep potion every night like my mum told you to? Or were you lying to her too when you agreed to that, just like you lied to me that you were getting better?”

Biting back the urge to swear at both his wife and his mother-in-law, Harry sat up and wiped the cold sweat from his face with trembling hands. “I never agreed to do that, you both just assumed I did when I acted nice and didn’t argue about it.”

Ginny snorted. “Nice guys finish last.”

Lips thinning, Harry gave her a hard look and grappled with his temper. “Don’t mistake my kindness for weakness, Ginny.”

“Whatever,” she rolled her eyes. “The real Harry Potter wouldn’t be so passive, but I should be used to what a disappointment you are by now.”

It hadn’t taken more than a year of marriage to understand that to Ginny, the real Harry Potter would always be the fictional one from her books and not the flesh and blood man she’d married. “Takes one to know one,” Harry said through gritted teeth, unfortunately used to her insults.

The exchange made him want a stiff drink, but Harry firmly reminded himself that he didn’t do that anymore. He was proud of the progress he’d made and didn’t want to jeopardize it, choosing to be present and in control of his life as well as a good role model for his kids. Besides, Hermione would kill him or, even worse, be disappointed and give him a humiliating and guilt-inducing lecture paired with a painful intervention.

“Oh, that’s mature. What are you, twelve?” Stripping her nightgown off over her head, Ginny dropped it carelessly onto the floor and bent over to shimmy into her pants.

Lips pressed tight, Harry watched her, completely unmoved by the near nudity. It had been a long time since they’d been intimate, and even longer since he’d been attracted to her. Ginny had always enjoyed that part of their relationship a lot more than he did. Sex felt more like taking a test than making love, where he had to work his hardest to check all the boxes and perform to her satisfaction or she’d mark him as failing and put him in detention for days. Meanwhile, she put no effort into pleasing him beyond ‘allowing’ him to eventually come. He’d overheard a conversation once where she’d bragged about his performance to her friends, so he knew he had nothing to be ashamed of, but most of the time he left their bed feeling used and dirty, the momentary pleasures of physical intimacy and release a poor recompense.

Pulling on a shirt and shoving her bare feet into shoes, Ginny went to Harry’s dresser and started rooting through the items he kept on top. Harry scrubbed at his face in an attempt to kickstart his brain. “Ginny, what are you doing? It’s the middle of the night.”

Grabbing Harry’s wallet, Ginny opened it and emptied it of money, stuffing it into the outer pocket of her bag before dropping his wallet to the floor on top of her dirty nightgown. “I’m taking off. I might come back on Monday. We’ll see.”

Harry blinked. “But you were supposed to hang out with the kids this weekend, remember? You promised.”

Shoulders going tight, Ginny didn’t turn to look at him. “Don’t try to use them against me. I’ll hang out with them another day.”

“What the hell, Ginny. You said that last time you bailed on them. You need to keep your promise.”

“I don’t need a second father, Harry,” she snapped. “Look, they can just go and hang out with my mother. She won’t mind and I need this time for myself.”

“The kids will mind,” Harry said angrily, stuffing his feet into his slippers and standing up from the bed. “Ginny—”

“Nope.” Holding up her palm in negation, avoiding his eyes, she tugged the strap of her bag over her shoulder and pulled out her wand. “Don’t try to stop me. I’m gone.” Striding from the bedroom, she slammed the door at her back. Wrenching it back open, Harry ran out of the room and downstairs, but she was already gone.

Angry, Harry paced back and forth across the living room, fighting the urge to punch the wall. He wanted to storm after her and drag her back to finish the argument, but long experience had shown him how futile that was. It never worked and her family just enabled her bad habits, twisting things to make him into the bad guy. Harry felt powerless. He burned with the need to chase her down and have an adult conversation for once about their problems and the children’s needs and figure out how they were going to fix things together as a couple, but it was impossible, because not only did he not know where Ginny had disappeared to, but even if he did find her, she would only shut down the second she got uncomfortable and start screaming, shooting hexes, and running off again.

Abruptly running out of steam, he sagged against the wall, hitting a fist against his thigh. Exhausted, Harry scrubbed his hands through his sweat-damp hair. His sweat-soaked pajamas felt ice cold against his skin. He trudged back upstairs and checked on his children, who had thankfully slept through the nightmare and argument or, in the case of Albus, were at least pretending to. Harry pressed a soft kiss to the back of Albus’s head, tucked the covers over James’s sprawled limbs, and counted the rise and fall of Lily’s chest. Wandering back to his room, he collapsed onto his sweat-soaked sheets, then shifted over to Ginny’s dryer side of the bed, tossing and turning until sunrise.

In the morning he got dressed and went into the kitchen, planning on making a special breakfast for the kids to soften the blow of their mother once more breaking her promise to them. However, when he opened the pantry, it was empty of food. Harry swore under his breath, remembering that Ginny was supposed to do the shopping this week. Behind his back he heard the sound of the kids coming down the stairs. Harry quickly shut the pantry door.

“What’s for breakfast?” Albus asked, yawning.

Closing his eyes, Harry took a slow, silent breath. He didn’t have money for food because Ginny had just cleared out his wallet. They could go eat at the Burrow, but he didn’t want to deal with Molly and her questions and opinions about Ginny. Molly was vocal about how they should have another kid to fix their marriage. Harry loved his kids, but Ginny didn’t want more and Harry didn’t want to watch another child of his suffer under her so-called care. She’d made it clear that she’d never really wanted the three they had and had implied that Molly had somehow coerced her into having them, though Harry did his best to hide that from the children.

“Where’s Mum?” Lily asked hesitantly.

Turning around, Harry pasted a regretful expression on his face. “Something came up and she unfortunately had to leave for the weekend. Sorry guys, but we’ll still find some fun things to do.”

James grabbed a cup out of the cabinet and slammed it shut. “Something came up, sure,” he muttered under his breath. As the oldest, he was most used to his mum’s disappointing behavior. Harry hated that for him.

Taking a hitching breath, Lily bit her lip and stared down at the floor. “Okay.” Albus came and leaned against her, silently pressing their heads and shoulders together.

Now everyone looked upset. That wouldn’t do.

Harry clapped his hands, “I have an idea! Let’s go to Aunt Hermione’s and make them a surprise Saturday breakfast. They’d love that! You can play with your cousins afterward.”

Rubbing a hand under her nose, Lily looked up. “Can I help crack the eggs?”

“Certainly, Sweetheart.” Harry gave a silent sigh as his kids packed themselves up. Hermione and Ron’s Floo had never been warded against Harry and his brood, so he didn’t bother calling over ahead of time, just gathered up his kids and left.

∞⌛∞

Chapter 7:

∞⌛∞

∞2016, August 5—Home of Hermione and Ron Weasley∞

~Harry Potter (36)~

Harry knew where everything was in Hermione’s kitchen, so he set Lily to cracking eggs and started cooking, keeping up a cheerful chatter with the kids, whose moods seemed to have bounced back after Ginny’s desertion.

Hermione wandered into the kitchen a few minutes later in a half-tied periwinkle blue housecoat, her uncombed hair flat on one side and bushy on the other. When she saw her bustling kitchen, she just stopped and blinked at them slowly.

“Here Aunt Hermione,” James said with a grin, handing her a steaming mug of tea. Taking the mug, Hermione took a small sip, closed her eyes, and sighed. Lifting the mug, she took a bigger gulp and turned around, shuffling away. All without saying a single word.

“We’re making breakfast for you,” Albus called. Hermione just waved a hand over her shoulder without turning around and disappeared upstairs.

Harry smiled after her fondly and his kids giggled.

A minute later Rose and Hugo came stampeding down the stairs, though ten-year-old Hugo had his shirt on inside out. “Breakfast and Potters!” Hugo exclaimed with delight, rushing over to Harry and jumping on his back. “Hi, Uncle Harry!”

Braced for it, Harry laughed and caught Hugo under the legs, spinning him around. “How’s my favorite nephew this morning?”

“Great now that you’re here!” Leaning over Harry’s shoulder and almost causing him to capsize, Hugo gasped. “Are those chocolate chip pancakes?!”

“You bet they are,” Harry said as the kids cheered. Hugo’s sleeve twisted up, revealing a yellowing bruise on his forearm, probably from tripping again since he was only middling at sports, unlike the athletic Rose. Ron always complained about how clumsy Hugo was. Harry remembered how disconcerting growth spurts could be and tried to be nice about it since Hugo could be sensitive.

“Best. Saturday. Ever,” Rose announced, joining Albus in loading up plates, stealing a slice of apple in the process.

“Hey!” Albus protested.

“Rose,” Harry said mock-sternly, making her freeze and look at him wide-eyed. He leaned forward with Hugo still on his back. “Hook me and Hugo up. Ahh~” Opening his mouth, he waited.

“Ahhh~” Hugo echoed, his bony elbows digging into Harry’s shoulders, probably causing some bruises of his own.

Relaxing, Rose looked at them and giggled. Picking up two apples, she popped them into their mouths.

Harry chewed and swallowed. “Yum! Thanks, sweetheart.” She sent him a dimpled smile.

Hugo, not satisfied with just apples, hooked his arm around Harry’s neck and reached out to the side to steal a handful of chocolate chips from the bag. Choking and coughing, Harry adjusted the strangling grip around his neck as Hugo tipped his head back and poured chocolate chips into his mouth. Several bounced off his chin and down the back of Harry’s shirt.

“Hugo, you’re making a mess!” Rose complained, sounding just like her mother.

Laughing, Harry slid Hugo down off his back and nudged him towards the other side of the kitchen. “Grab the broom and clean that up, then go and set the table for us, lad.” Shaking out his shirt to remove the chocolate chips before they melted onto his back, Harry turned back to his pancake batter.

A few minutes later, Ron came thumping down the stairs in his work robes and stole the pancake off of Harry’s fork with his fingers right before Harry could bite into it. “I’m late for a meeting with a client,” Ron said, taking a big bite.

“On a Saturday morning?” Harry lowered his empty fork with a sigh. “Anybody I know?”

Looking down, Ron brushed crumbs off his chest, leaving a streak of chocolate behind. “I doubt it,” he said, looking shifty.

Harry opened his mouth and then closed it again without saying anything. There was no point in pressing Ron for a better answer. He probably wouldn’t tell the truth. Ron didn’t confide in Harry anymore. Despite Harry coming over to his house regularly, plus family get-togethers at the Burrow, their friendship had somehow faded into casual and meaningless pleasantries interspersed with nostalgic references to the triumphs of their youth. He just didn’t get Ron anymore and Ron didn’t seem interested in getting him.

It was nothing like his intense and enduring friendship with Hermione. She was like a sister but even better, even more. He didn’t know how to explain it.

“Bye, dad!” Hugo said, jumping up from the table to throw his arms around Ron. “I’ll miss you!”

Ron patted him on the head and stuffed the rest of Harry’s pancake into his mouth. “Bye kids, Harry,” he said through a mouth full of food as he unwound Hugo’s arms and turned away to disappear through the Floo.

Hermione came in a moment later, dressed with hair neatly combed and braided back, and looked around alertly. “Where’s Ron?”

“He said he had a meeting with a client,” Rose said helpfully before licking a smear of chocolate off the back of her hand.

“Oh,” Hermione said softly after a beat of silence, her shoulders going tight. The hand hanging down by her side, the one hidden from the kids, tightened into a fist. Turning to face the cabinets, Hermione stood staring straight ahead, not grabbing anything.

Clearing his throat, Harry walked up next to her and leaned sideways, pressing his arm to hers. “What can I do?” he asked, quiet enough that the rambunctious children shouldn’t be able to hear.

“Just be here,” she said almost inaudibly.

“Done.” Reaching out, Harry grabbed her a fresh plate and raised his voice to normal levels. “Despite the ravening hordes, I save you some of your favorite chocolate chip pancakes and some fresh fruit.” He gestured to the covered plate hidden in the back. “Here, sit down and let me get it.” Guiding her into a chair with a hand on her shoulder, Harry pressed a warm mug of tea into her hands and went back to the counter to fill up a plate with her favorite things. “Do you want me to make you some cocoa?”

“No, this is fine. Thank you,” she said after a moment, taking a breath and sending him a small but genuine smile.

After everyone finished eating, the kids all ran upstairs to play in their rooms, leaving the adults alone to clean up and chat. As Hermione lingered over her second cup of tea, Harry did the dishes by hand instead of using magic. Now that it was just them, Harry allowed himself to frown and remember that he was still upset with his wife. Only Hermione was here, so he didn’t have to pretend to be okay anymore. He splashed around soapy water and threw silverware, scrubbing pots to within an inch of their lives and spattered water everywhere when rinsing them, then slamming them onto the stovetop to dry.

“That’s starting to get annoying,” Hermione said with irritation.

“I can be annoying if I want to,” Harry said stubbornly. “I’m the one doing the cleaning, not you.”

“While that’s true, those are my dishes that you’re cleaning and I don’t want them broken,” Hermione said tartly. She blew out her breath. “So do you want to tell me what’s on your mind or do you want to break something and make me mad?”

Harry scowled at her over his shoulder. “Why should I when it looks like you have even bigger problems than me?”

Hermione looked at him evenly. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Harry raised a brow skeptically. She never complained as much as she obviously needed to. “I don’t believe you. Maybe I’ll start calling you an ostrich for how often you bury your head in the sand.”

“I don’t, so leave it,” she said sharply. “You, however, do. So spill. And be nice to me.”

Pressing his wet hands flat against the edge of the sink, Harry dropped his head and sighed. “Yeah, okay.” He breathed in and out for a minute. “Sorry, I’m just in a foul mood. You didn’t deserve that. Still friends?” He hated the vulnerable note that slipped into his voice.

“Of course. You’re stuck with me forever,” she said easily. “Apology accepted.” Moving across the kitchen, she pulled out a fresh hand towel and handed it to him. “Dry yourself off and tell me what happened,” she ordered. “It’ll help me too. It’s true that I prefer dealing with other people’s problems and ignoring my own.” She pointed a finger. “But no judgement! We’re talking about you right now.”

Harry dried himself and chewed on his tongue, trying to decide what he wanted to share. Finally he heaved a sigh and said in a quiet voice so the kids upstairs couldn’t hear, “I had a bad nightmare…and then Ginny took off after cleaning out my wallet and not doing the weekly shopping, so we had no food to eat. Plus the kids were upset at their mom breaking another promise to spend time with them and I felt useless and was tempted to—well, anyway.” Harry cut himself off. That was a bit more detailed than he’d intended to say, but at least it was just Hermione, who already knew most of his secrets.

“So you came here,” Hermione said as Harry put down the towel and turned around to face her.

“Yeah,” he nodded and then forced himself to finish confessing. “I thought about drinking, but I’m done being that stupid. I decided that bringing the kids here and seeing you was a better choice.”

“Good. You are getting smarter with age,” she winked and Harry gave a reluctant laugh.

Hermione pulled out her wand and gestured at the remaining dishes and the sponge, sending them flying dripping through the air above the sink. “Let magic finish that up while we talk. Come, let’s go into the den.”

“What if I don’t want to talk?” Harry said just to be contrary, nevertheless following her in and throwing himself down onto the couch where they always sat together.

Hermione sat on the other end and turned, tucking up one leg and resting a pillow on her lap as she looked him over. “To be honest, I’m more interested in what you need than what you want,” she said tartly. Leaning forward, she took his hand and gazed into his eyes. “I’m listening, so tell me, Harry. What do you NEED.”

Staring into her face, Harry blurted out the first thing that came to mind. “You.” Hermione’s liquid brown eyes widened in surprise and then softened with pleasure, the corners of her lips tilting up. She didn’t loosen her warm grip on his hand. That felt important. Right now, that felt like everything.

“Okay, I’m here. What else?” she asked.

Clearing his throat, Harry let himself ramble, knowing he was safe and not alone. “Help? To feel like I’m not a failure as a husband and a father? Natural and unpotioned sleep? Someone to listen to me talk and actually care?” Laughing awkwardly, he looked away. “Sorry, I’m being stupid. It’s just the nightmare I had last night. It has me off balance.”

“So tell me about it and we’ll feel stupid together,” Hermione said. “Though I’m rarely stupid, so I think it’s much more likely that we’ll start feeling better together instead, but here, lay down.” She patted the pillow on her lap, bossy as ever. It was a familiar comfort.

Harry hesitated, but he was so tired and his heart felt sore. Slowly, as if he might break if he moved too fast, he slid down and put his head on the pillow on her lap. “It was the graveyard,” he said softly, “but instead of Cedric it was you and the kids who got killed in front of me. I was powerless to stop it. I killed Pettigrew, but it didn’t help.” Pressing his lips tight, Harry swallowed down the wail unexpectedly trying to work its way out of his chest, fighting against the urge to cry. “So, yeah. That was bad.”

Hermione’s warm hand covered his damp eyes. He could feel his eyelashes fluttering and catching against her skin. “Close your eyes for me,” she ordered gently. “Now, I want you to picture a fierce little Hermione brandishing a wand and a book.” She waited for a beat. “Do you see her?”

Lips quirking and shoulders starting to unwind, Harry nodded beneath her hand. “Yeah, I see her. The book even has a bookmark.”

“As it should,” she said stoutly, “good. Now, when bad thoughts and memories appear, or you’re tempted to relapse, I want you to send little fighter Hermione out to deal with it, wand blazing, understand?” Harry gave a slight nod. She kept her hand pressed over his eyes, a comforting weight. “And when you need to sleep, have little Hermione open her book and start reading out loud. That should quickly bore you to death.” Harry huffed a soft laugh. The little Hermione in his head saluted him with her wand, tucked her book against her chest, and sat down, making herself comfortable.

Sighing, Harry reached up and squeezed the real Hermione’s wrist, so grateful to always have her there in his corner, feeling something hard and tight in his chest finally start to unclench. He didn’t know what he’d do without her.

Unexpectedly tears started welling in his eyes. He couldn’t stop them. “I’m just so tired,” he confessed raggedly. Abruptly turning into her, Harry buried his face against her middle and tried to bite back hitching sobs.

Hermione rested her hand on his shoulder and rubbed in circles with her thumb. “I’ve got you, let it out. I’m here.”

“Sorry, I just need sleep,” he finally said, voice muffled against her shirt.

“It’s fine, no need to apologize,” she said, rubbing her hand back and forth. “I’ve got you and the kids are fine upstairs. Why don’t you take a nap?”

Harry took a shuddering breath and considered it. A voice in his head mocked him that real men shouldn’t need a nap first thing in the morning, but little Hermione squashed it flat with her big book and then pointed a bossy finger at his face before handing him a fuzzy red and gold blanket and a pillow. “Okay,” he said in a small voice into Hermione’s shirt. She was soft and warm and smelled like home. He was so lucky to have her as a best friend. The world wouldn’t end if he let her take care of him. “You can start reading out loud now,” he mumbled into her shirt.

“As you wish,” she said with amusement in her voice. Petting his shoulder, Hermione pulled a book off the side table and started reading out loud in a slow, even voice. The book was really boring. Between one page and the next, Harry fell asleep.

∞⌛∞

∞2020, July 3—Home of Hermione and Ron Weasley∞

~Hugo Weasley (14)~

Downstairs, Hugo could hear the echoey percussive sound of Uncle Harry Floo calling with his mum. He ran down the stairs and skidded around the corner. “Mum, stop gossiping with Uncle Harry and look at what I found hidden in Dad’s old school trunk up in the attic! This crazy gold necklace was hidden behind the lining. Isn’t it cool?”

“Just a moment, Hugo,” Mum said, turning back to the Floo. “Motherhood calls. I’ll talk to you tomorrow, Harry, same time as usual.” Mum sent Uncle Harry a wry smile and stood up from the cushion where she’d been lounging next to the Floo.

“Tomorrow,” Harry promised from the fire, “unless today’s work meeting gets out miraculously early and I find time to come over with the family tonight to celebrate Hugo’s birthday.” Uncle Harry gave a fire-bright smile. “Also, you left your bookmarks in all my new books. When are you coming back to get them? Or better yet, get your own books?”

Mum laughed. “I have to have a reason to visit besides your sour face, though I do love your children.”

From behind Harry came a chorus of, “Love you too, Aunt Hermione!” Mum grinned widely. Seeing her so happy made Hugo feel happy.

Raising his voice, Uncle Harry called, “Tell Hugo Happy 14th Birthday from his favorite uncle and cousins and that I’ll give him his gift the next time I see him—either tonight or tomorrow!”

“Thanks, Uncle Harry!” Hugo called back. “I’d say you weren’t my favorite, but we all know that would be a lie.” They all laughed and the Floo call winked out.

Rose came into the room. “Honestly, Mum, I don’t see how you and Uncle Harry can still find new things to talk about every day,” she said as Mum banished the dusty bits of ash from the Floo call that had stuck to her new gauzy burgundy dress robes, which looked perfect for the summer heat.

Mum had dressed up special for Hugo’s birthday and their trip to Kew Gardens, where she’d found special exhibition tickets that worked with the social distancing measures currently active in the muggle world. Thank goodness magicals couldn’t catch most muggle illnesses. Uncle Harry had bought the new dress for Mum from a window display after grandma had thrown out all of her other summer robes, saying Ron had mentioned they weren’t modest or the right styles, as if either of them had good taste in clothing. He’d bought Lily and Rose new dresses at the same time too. There surely wasn’t a more beautiful Mum in the world. Today, Dad would have to say something nice about her looks for once.

“Don’t you ever get bored talking to him?” Rose asked.

“Not with Harry,” Mum said with a nostalgic smile. “I had to train him up a bit with the small talk when we were younger, but nowadays once he gets going he’s happy to keep on going, sometimes even longer than me! Besides, we have been best friends for almost 30 years.”

“Twenty-nine years as of September the first, but who’s counting?” Hugo put his nose in the air and mimicked his mother’s speech, waving the hand fisting the gold necklace in the air and making the chains chime musically.

“Oh, you,” she gave him a mock glare and swatted a limp hand towards his arm. It swished through the air next to him without him having to bother to dodge. Mum would never hit him for real. Not like—

“Happy 14th Birthday, sweetheart,” she said, stepping close and wrapping him in a big hug. “I love you so much.”

Biting his lip, Hugo reminded himself that Mum wasn’t supposed to know about what happened between men when she wasn’t around. Ignoring the squirming feeling in his chest, Hugo let himself sink against her side, soaking in the warm and loving feel of her hug and letting it sooth the jagged edges of his emotions. His mum’s hugs were the best.

“What were you looking for in the attic?” Mum asked, smacking a kiss to his forehead before letting him go.

“Well since you said I couldn’t dye my hair green like the lead singer of the Troll Tuners—unless you’ve changed your mind?” He looked at her hopefully and wiped the wetness from the kiss off his forehead.

Leaning back on one foot, she frowned and crossed her arms. “No, Hugo, that man has a bad personal reputation and isn’t someone to emulate. You’re handsome and wonderful just as you are and you need to accept that instead of always trying to follow others—” she cut herself off and sighed. “Whatever the case, when you’re older and move out you’ll have plenty of time then to dye your hair crazy colors.”

“That’s not fair,” he said, pouting.

Mum’s eyes narrowed. “That’s final. No unnatural looks until you graduate. I love you, and you know I always try to support you kids and have your best interests at heart, but I will not have you going around all summer with green hair looking like you got hit in the face by a quaffle and then dragged across the grass upside-down from your broom.”

Rose snorted and almost fell off her chair laughing. “Oh man, wait until I tell the Potters you said that! They’re gonna die laughing.”

Mum sent her a sharp look. “In our house those are the rules and they apply to you as well, missy. I know you’ve been playing around with aging-up makeup charms and those bust-inflating amulets you lifted from your Aunt Ginny’s bathroom.”

Hugo made a gagging face and Rose froze like she’d just been hit by a Petrification Charm.

Hermione flicked her eyes down to Rose’s chest. “Your figure is already lovely and much more…developed than your Aunt Ginny, especially at your age, so you have nothing to be ashamed of and shouldn’t be making them even bigger. Most importantly, you’ve not graduated yet. I’ll not have you charming your hair silver blond and pretending to be over 18 so you can go out clubbing with Fleur’s adult girls and pick up sketchy older boys who don’t know how to appreciate anything except what’s below a girl’s chin, and I’ll be telling them the same thing I just told you at the next Weasley family get-together.”

“Mo-om!” Rose cried, going scarlet. “That’s so unfair!”

Mom arched one brow. “You and your brother have the same lines. I could keep going with the consequences. Shall I?”

Defeated, Rose sagged. “No thanks,” she sighed. Rallying, turned to Hugo and clapped her hands. “So! New topic. You found a necklace of Dad’s, right? You were about to tell us what you were doing in the attic.”

Hugo cooperated, not wanting more mom consequences either, and showed them the gold necklace in his hand, untangling the chains and straightening the pendants as he spoke. “I was curious about what dad was like when he was my age, so I went to his school trunk to find some clues. His stories don’t always make sense with what other people say about him and—” cutting himself off, he flushed and looked down. “Anyway, I’m probably just too dumb to understand—”

“Don’t call yourself dumb. You’re not,” Mum interrupted.

Avoiding her eyes and the argument, Hugo kept talking “—so I decided to look for clues about Dad in his old school things and I found this.” Hugo lifted the necklace and spread it out. It had three layers of chains and multiple large and small pendants covered in squiggly writing. “Isn’t it cool? It looks foreign too. I think I’ve maybe seen it before in a picture, but I can’t remember where.” Looking at his mum, he asked, “Do you know?”

“It doesn’t look familiar to me, but we can check the photo albums.” She gave him a loving smile, though her smiles were never as bright as they seemed in the old photos. Stories about her from the past also didn’t fit the perpetually sad, worn out woman he saw most of the time. Hugo didn’t let himself think about why, or about how she got worse the more Dad was around.

Rose leaned against his side and reached out to finger the golden pendant shaped like a feather. “This is really old looking. I think those symbols are Egyptian, like the stuff at Uncle Bill’s house. Didn’t dad go on a trip there once as a kid?” She looked at her mom.

Snapping her fingers, Mum turned and went to the bookcase in the corner, bending over to pull out a dusty photo album on the bottom shelf. “The Weasley family won a bunch of prize money the summer before our third year and used it to visit Bill when he still worked in Egypt.” Flipping open the album, she turned it around and showed them a photo of their dad’s family standing in front of a pyramid. “Here it is. Your dad is thirteen in this picture,” she pointed, “and he’s wearing the necklace. Good catch, Rose.”

“He looks so ridiculous,” Rose said with a laugh. “Though it is a very big necklace. He’s drowning in it.” In the magical photo, the twins were making fun of Dad and Uncle Percy.

“That mangy pet rat on Dad’s shoulder isn’t helping,” Hugo said, wrinkling his nose. “I thought you guys hated pet rats?” he asked, looking at his mother.

“We do now,” Mum said cryptically, expression going dark and distant.

“Whatever that means,” Rose muttered. She and Hugo looked at each other and rolled their eyes. Sometimes his parents were too protective, refusing to talk about the past as if they couldn’t understand it. Hugo was fourteen and more than mature enough to understand their old war stories from when they’d been his age.

“I saw that,” Mum said, poking them in the sides until they started to laugh and squirm away.

Picking up the dropped photo album, Hugo saw that it had turned to another picture. Mum, Dad, and Uncle Harry were all kids, smiling and being silly for the camera with their arms around each other. Wistful, Hugo wished he could have known his parents then, when they seemed so happy and heroic and loyal to each other, not the bitter, broken people they’d become as adults. But he didn’t like noticing that because it made his stomach hurt.

Closing the photo album, he returned it to the shelf. Today was his birthday. He wanted to feel happy today. For just one day he was going to pretend that nothing was wrong with his family. That would be his gift to himself.

As he bounced the necklace in his hand, Hugo Weasley had an idea, a very Weasley kind of idea. It made him laugh.

“What?” Rose said, watching him..

“Hey,” he said breathlessly, putting a hand over his mouth to hide a fresh bout of laughter. “Let’s prank Dad! We’ll have mom wear the necklace and see how long it takes for Dad to notice! We can even say things like, ‘Wow mom, what a nice new necklace?’ And she can say—”

Rose took over, “This old thing? I’ve had it for ages and wear it all of the time! Then he’ll be like, wait! That’s my old necklace, the one I lost as a kid!”

“And we’ll be like, ‘What do you mean? Mom totally wears that all of the time. Don’t you remember?!’ and scratch our heads.” They broke down into giggles.

Mum seemed more hesitant. “I don’t know, kids. He might not remember it at all, or even get upset instead of finding it funny.”

“Oh Mum, don’t be like that,” Hugo rolled his eyes. “Dad’s always saying you’re no fun and such a boring stick in the mud. He doesn’t like how serious I am either. This will prove him wrong about both of us. It’s a great idea!”

“Yeah, Mum,” Rose said, coming to his defense. “Dad did work in a joke shop, after all, and he’s Uncle George’s brother. How could he not think it’s funny? Or at the least, fun to be reminded of his cool vacation in Egypt almost 30 years ago. Maybe he’ll even tell us some cool stories while we walk around the magical exhibit.”

“I don’t know,” Mum said, still hesitating. “The necklace could be enchanted or charmed to do something dangerous. We should check it first.”

“I already checked it for pranks and harmful stuff, Mum,” Hugo said crossly. “It’s fine. Stop fussing. Dad always says you fuss too much. We should get going now so we aren’t late,” Jumping forward, Hugo reached behind his mom’s neck and fastened the necklace on her before she could stop him. “There.”

“Hugo,” she complained, sighing as she reached up to touch the lowest hanging pendant. At her touch the necklace seemed to ripple for a moment, the pendants lighting up in sequence and the entire thing seeming to take up more space and cast more shadow than should be physically possible. Taking a step back, Hugo rubbed his eyes and blinked, but he must’ve imagined it. The necklace looked normal, if very impressive.

“Wow, Mum,” Rose said, stepping back and looking her up and down. “You look gorgeous in that, like it was tailor made for you. It’s not too much at all. That burgundy dress compliments it perfectly.”

“She’s right,” Hugo agreed, impressed. “It looked too big and gaudy in my hands and on Dad in the photo, but on you it looks positively regal. You could be a queen or a goddess.”

“Fine, I’ll wear it if it makes you two happy,” giving a crooked smile, Mum looked up at the clock on the wall, “but it’s way too early to leave for the gardens yet. Our tickets for the Magical Plants and Mycology of Asia Exhibition aren’t for a couple more hours.” She looked back into their faces and bit her lip. “Just,” she paused and then finished quietly, “just don’t be too disappointed if things don’t work out the way you hoped with your father.”

Looking down, she sighed and rubbed a finger over the necklace. Pausing, her brow started to wrinkle. She lifted the small rectangular bottom pendant to look at it more closely. “How strange. That symbol almost looks like the ones I put on my boo—ouch!”

“You okay mom?” Rose asked.

“Yes, yes I’m fine.” Grumbling, she shook out her hand and looked at the bead of blood welling up on her fingertip. “It just shocked me, a little jolt of static electricity probably, and then I scratched myself.” She sucked on her finger for a second and then held it out to her kids. “There, see? No harm done.”

“What were you saying?” Hugo asked.

Mom blinked and then shook her head. “You know, I can’t remember. Must not have been important.”

Chewing on the edge of her fingernail, Rose looked down and said slowly, “Dad has a bad habit of forgetting important things. He stayed at his work flat last night instead of coming home to get ready for Hugo’s birthday. What if he forgets he’s supposed to join us at the Gardens today, like he forgot to come to my game last month?”

“I’m sure he’ll remember,” Hugo said stubbornly, sticking out his chin. “This isn’t some boring old game. It’s my birthday! Dad wouldn’t forget my birthday.” Rose made an angry face and stuck out her tongue at him. “He wouldn’t!” Hugo spun around. “Mum! Let’s go pick him up. You know Dad’s always hungry. We could take him out to eat before the gardens. He’d like that.”

“I don’t know, Hugo. Your Dad really doesn’t like us coming to his work flat. We should probably just wait at home.”

“Only when he’s got a meeting or working on a big project, but he promised to take the whole day off for my birthday. He wouldn’t forget that. He probably just got drunk again last night with a client and decided to sleep it off instead of stumbling home. So can we please go get him? Please? It’ll be fun! Besides, don’t I deserve a birthday lunch as your favorite child?”

Rose hit him with a Stinging Hex in the bum, making him yelp and jump. “Son! Favorite son, I mean, obviously, sorry,” he cast Rose a look. “Please Mum. We can even go to your favorite daughter’s favorite restaurant.” He bowed to Rose. “Dad likes that place too.”

Instantly Rose’s expression lifted and she swung around. “Oh yes, mum. Please?” Rose looked up at Mum imploringly.

“Please?” Hugo begged, making his eyes wide.

“Please,” Rose repeated, making her eyes even wider than Hugo’s.

“Don’t you love us?” Hugo made his lip wibble.

“Unfair, double-teaming me with the eyes and lips,” Mum said, trying to look away even as she crumbled. “Fine! I give in, you manipulative little trolls. Obviously I love and spoil you too much. Yes, we’ll go out to lunch too, just let me grab my purse and we’ll go and get your father at his work flat.”

Cheering, Rose and Hugo ran for the Floo. Hugo just knew this was going to be great, his best birthday yet! Nothing could possibly go wrong.

∞⌛∞

~Narrator~

Newsflash, dear reader, Hugo’s birthday that year was not great. In fact, on that day everything that could go wrong, did go wrong. It was a day that ruined the rest of Hugo’s life.

It was a day that ruined a great many people’s lives.

It ruined life itself.

It was such a bad day that someone powerful had to go to unprecedented lengths to create a way to redo it completely. Unfortunately, being powerful does not make one perfect, nor does it make one all-knowing, even if you are an entity some people might call a god, even if you are the Master of Death. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the tragedy that occurred that day led to the extinction of the human race.

Death on such a massive scale was unprecedented, at least until it happened several more times in succession when it was discovered that extinction events create a massive well of power, enough to achieve what sane people might call impossible, enough power to seamlessly restart those billions of lives that had been snuffed out, move through time, and rewrite history. Conveniently for Death, he’d once created a rather amazing invisibility cloak that allowed him to hide at will from any other deity who cared enough to try and stop him.

To be fair, Death hadn’t intended to kill off all life on the planet. It happened unexpectedly during his first attempt to send a living person through time. However, he refused to be discouraged. Finding (or being found by) a deity who owed him a favor and was invested in the continuing existence of life and humanity, they restarted the human race and tweaked things so on his second attempt no one would notice all of the dying and life would restart almost seamlessly.

When Death still couldn’t achieve his desired outcome on the second attempt, there was only one thing left to do. The scientific process was clear. Obviously he had to repeat the experiment, only changing one variable at a time, until his desired outcome was reached. Although he’d intended to take scrupulous notes, one thing led to another, certain people who weren’t supposed to time travel snuck in anyway, altering multiple variables at once, and the death toll rather got away from him. However, if anyone asked later, he was prepared to testify that life was only annihilated perhaps a dozen times total or, well, certainly not more than fifty, maybe a hundred times at most, tops.

Whatever the case, people (and godlike entities) being imperfect, rewriting the events surrounding Hugo’s 14th birthday was difficult. Instead of making things better, many of the attempts made things even worse. Some things, once broken, can never be fixed.

Or at least that’s what a quitter would tell you. Quitters are losers. A winner knows that perseverance is the key to success. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again, even if it takes you to the boundary of death and beyond.

Not that fixing things is easy—oh no, certainly not—but rather that it isn’t impossible for someone obsessive enough to never give up. It takes a lot of time, repetition, multiple detours, and an inhuman—one might even say godly—amount of effort, even when dead tired (perhaps especially when dead tired) and triple all of that when Death is involved and someone is already dead. Only love would make such a massive endeavor worth the effort.

Luckily there’s a lot of love on both sides of life and death to go around. Anyone who says otherwise is trying to sell you something—perhaps the idea that life is pain. Or perhaps that they’re fine running around with a dread new identity while hiding their face and aren’t desperately, hopelessly in love with a girl with a habit of bossing them around and making them fetch things like pitchers of water or books.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

After all, we still have to get through the trauma of Hugo’s birthday and all of those promised deaths.

Until then, dear reader, stay strong~

∞⌛∞

Chapter 8:

∞⌛∞

∞2020, July 3—Ron Weasley’s Work Flat∞

~Hermione Weasley (40)~

Trying not to hyperventilate, eyes burning, Hermione stumbled back out the door of Ron’s work flat, dragging the children with her in each arm. She had their heads pressed against her chest and her hands over their eyes. The children were crying, their fingers clenching painfully against her forearms as tears soaked into her dress. Perhaps she was pressing too tightly, mashing their ears uncomfortably against the gold necklace, but she couldn’t risk them seeing more.

They’d already seen too much.

Glass shattered against the door right before it slammed shut. She flinched and the children cried out. Broken rose petals and shards of red glass skittered across the hall, A thorny stem with a serrated leaf and single crumpled pink petal rolled to a stop against Hermione’s foot. She dragged the children back farther.

“I’ve got you, you’re safe, we’re fine. Everything’s fine,” she lied, trying to calm both the children and herself down. She had to be strong for her children. She couldn’t run away screaming and blubbering. It was tempting to blast her way back inside to attack Ron, but she was afraid of what more she and the children might be forced to see.

Inside the flat came the sound of Ron screaming and losing his temper. A girl’s voice shouted back, young and whiny. She sounded barely older than Rose, probably barely legal, if she even was legal. Hermione hadn’t gotten a good enough look at her face, just her naked—

1. Don’t think about it! she ordered herself.

“We need to get out of here,” Hermione said, forcing herself to relax her grip on the children and direct them quickly but firmly down the hall and out of the building. “It’s okay, we’re going to be fine.”

Tears trickled down her cheeks. It made her mad. Ron didn’t deserve her tears and seeing her cry would not calm down her children or make her feel better. Nothing could make her feel better right now. Hermione roughly wiped at her face.

She couldn’t fall apart until she reached Harry. Her lower lip trembled. She needed Harry, her best friend. Stepping outside into the slap of heat coming off the pavement, she remembered that Harry had a big meeting today and wouldn’t be done until later.

Her parents were probably also too busy to talk, but even if they weren’t, it wasn’t likely to help. They’d try to be supportive but end up making her feel worse by saying I told you so. They’d never understood why she’d married Ron, anymore than they understood the world of magic that had stolen her away from them at eleven.

Hermione was on her own for now. Her jaw and chest ached from how tightly she was clenching back the screams and sobs fighting to escape, but she would not let them out. She would not. Hermione would be strong for her children. She could break down later when alone.

“What do we do now, Mum?” Rose asked in a small voice, forehead pressing against Hermione’s throat.

“I’m so s-sorry,” Hugo sobbed. He looked devastated, hands tucked under his armpits as he shook. He’d probably have fallen to the scorching sidewalk if she didn’t have such a tight grip on him. “Th-this is all m-my f-fault.”

“It is not your fault!” Hermione said fiercely. “Listen to me—listen!” Hermione hugged her children and moved them into the shade of the building. “This is nobody’s fault but your father’s. You—we—did nothing wrong.”

Blinking back tears, she fought to keep her voice steady. “I love you so much, no matter what. We’re going to be okay, alright? I love you. So no more tears for now.” Wiping away their tears with her open, trailing sleeves, she wished that the gauzy fabric was sturdier and more absorbent, but she couldn’t bring herself to let go of them long enough to fish around in her purse for a handkerchief. “Now Rose, Hugo, I need you to try and calm down. Let’s all remember we’re still British and try to keep a stiff upper lip, all right?”

Rose gave a watery snort and nodded, wiping her running nose on her hand.

Sniffling, face still crumpled, Hugo did his best to stop sobbing, though tears still dripped down his cheeks. “But everything’s ruined forever now. I’m sorry.” Unlike his father, Hugo was always apologizing and blaming himself for things going wrong. He’d always been such a sensitive child, struggling with anxiety and depression, blindly trusting and parroting the adults around him to a sometimes detrimental degree, and always idolizing his father despite Ron’s feet of clay. Yet he forgave so easily and loved so deeply too. Hermione adored his sweet, tender spirit.

Hermione refused to let this break any of them. “I’m not saying this isn’t a terrible turn of events, but everything is not ruined. We still have each other and that’s a lot. Change is inevitable. Life will go on and who knows, maybe it will get even better. It’s too soon to say, but as today is still Hugo’s birthday, and I love Hugo an awful lot, we’re going to try to forget what just happened and go and celebrate, just like we planned. We’ve all been looking forward to visiting London’s Kew Gardens to see their magical conservatory as well as tour their collection of ancient muggle and magical documents. Don’t forget they have a first edition of Hogwarts: a History.”

“Our favorite book,” Hugo whispered wetly, looking up at her and smearing his tears with one of her already damp sleeves, making an effort, bless him.

“That’s right.” Hermione bopped him on the nose. “Now let’s clean ourselves up and take our portkey to the gardens. We can get food there and wander around until our ticket time for the exhibit.” She forced her voice to sound upbeat. “Okay, Hugo? Rose?” She met both of their eyes.

“Yes, Mum,” the kids said meekly.

∞⌛∞

∞2020, July 3—London’s Kew Gardens∞

~Hermione Weasley (40)~

After barely picking at their lunch from the garden’s overpriced cafe, they still had time to kill before the Magical Plants and Mycology of Asia Exhibition opened. They couldn’t tour the rare magical book collection until they’d finished the exhibition because the tickets were strictly set up that way to keep muggle social distancing. Hermione was struggling to stay engaged and so were the kids. Perhaps coming here had been a bad idea, but she didn’t know where else to go and she was afraid of running into Ron at home.

The Burrow and her mother-in-law’s criticisms would be even worse. Despite walking in on Ron in flagrante delicto, Molly would still find some way to twist this around so it was all Hermione’s fault for not being enough of a woman for Ron, she just knew it. It had always been that way since even before they’d gotten married.

Throwing away the leftover food, unable to stomach another bite, Hermione let her feet wander, numbly making sure the children were following at her heels. She felt full of static, her mind spinning over the total failure of her marriage and all of the things she must have done wrong. But as many mistakes as she’d made—and there had been many—it didn’t absolve Ron from his actions. He was a bully and a liar. He’d been an awful father and horrible husband. He hadn’t even been a good friend, not in years, she thought bitterly. He’d cheated on her for who knows how long and broken too many promises to count. Yet she didn’t understand why, if he didn’t want to be married, he so violently refused to even discuss divorce the few times she’d been brave enough to try and bring it up. In some twisted part of her psyche, she’d thought that his threats and insistence on staying married must mean that somewhere deep down he still cared, that he still loved and wanted to be with her. She was such a fool. Stripped of illusions, she realized that Ron had turned her into a brittle shell of her former self. She felt humiliated, ashamed, and just so damn sad.

“Um, Mum?” Hugo said hesitantly, tugging at her sleeve.

“Hmm, yes?” she asked, looking over and pasting on a smile over her volatile emotions.

“Did you mean to take us this far into the muggle side of the gardens?” he asked, gesturing at the exotic glass sculptures decorating the grounds they were wandering through. Sprays of long and tall glass spirals reached into the sky, colorful fans of speckled glass on thin stems peeked around trees, and rock gardens sported multi-colored glass globes.

Looking around, Rose nodded. “It feels like those muggle storybooks you used to read us as kids, like we just stepped onto an alien planet.”

“Yeah, and we’re all space explorers,” Hugo said. “It’s weird. Lots of the muggles are wearing masks too, like they need breathing masks for the alien environment.”

Flushing, Hermione recognized the Chihuly: Reflections on Nature art exhibit from the posters in the cafe. It was completely out of their way on the far side of London’s Kew Gardens away from the Magical Conservatory. “Sorry, I got distracted. Let me check the time for our tickets.” Pulling out her wand, she started to cast a Tempus spell to make sure they hadn’t missed their reservation when Rose jumped in front of her and snatched away her wand.

“Mom! You can’t do that here! We’re surrounded by muggles,” Rose whispered furiously, looking around anxiously as she shoved the wand into Hermione’s purse.

“Right, you’re right. I’m sorry.” Feeling stupid, Hermione blinked hard. She looked up at the sky to stop the pooling tears of frustration from escaping. The sun was a fierce and bright yellow-white. If she looked at it too long, maybe she could blame her tears on the sun. Maybe it would burn her to ashes and she wouldn’t have to figure out how to move on from this.

“I didn’t say it was a bad weird,” Hugo said apologetically.

Huffing at herself for being foolish and weak, she blinked away the spots floating in her vision and looked around for something to distract them all with. Hopefully the kids didn’t notice the lingering sheen in her eyes. Once again she desperately wished for Harry. He was so good with the kids, not to mention with her. She wanted a hug from her best friend in the world, someone who’d hold her and let her break down instead of making her always be the strong one who solved all the problems and cleaned up all the messes. But she was an adult. Her kids need her to be the strong one right now. Besides, Harry was busy with work. She knew that if she called he’d drop everything and come running, but he didn’t deserve to have her drama disrupt his life. She’d see him tonight and have her breakdown then. She just had to hold on long enough.

“Maybe we could all use a little bit of weirdness,” Hermione said. “Let’s wander around these glass sculptures for an hour and then go see if they’ll let us in early with the next tour group.”

As they explored the grounds and moved in and out of the Temperate House where more sculptures and lush green plants were hidden, Hermione started to feel better. The sculptures were beautiful, unique, and wonderfully distracting. Inspired by nature yet delightfully unnatural, the bold colors and complex glass forms gleamed in the summer sun. Hermione was almost enjoying discovering new ones hidden around corners and towering over the pathways…or at least she was pretending as hard as she could that she was.

Cresting a small hill and following the gently curving path, she found a pond surrounded by tall fluffy trees and spiky grasses. The pond’s wind-ruffled water reflected the bright blue sky and dark green trees. Inside the edge of the pond, looking almost close enough to the shore to touch, towered a huge sculpture. It sat in a square of white gravel bordered by gray beams. In the center stood a tall red metal pole topped by a chaotic explosion of solid and speckled glass spirals in fiery shades of red, orange, and yellow. Hermione couldn’t tell if the sculpture was supposed to be a fireball or a tree on fire or even a tree of autumn leaves.

“It’s hot and I’m hungry,” Hugo announced, staring off to the side toward a stand selling drinks and ice cream where people were sitting around snacking. He licked his lips.

Looking over, Hermione wrinkled her nose. “We shouldn’t waste our money on overpriced, sugary sodas and fattening bags of crisps. Here.” She handed Hugo her purse. “There’s snacks in the side pocket, the usual stuff—trail mix, granola bars, etc.”

“But Mo-om,” Hugo whined, “it’s my birthday and I’m hot. I don’t want a granola bar. I want ice cream.”

“Me too,” Rose said, looking back and forth between the stand and her mum. “Can’t we just buy a treat? Please?”

“Please?” Hugo echoed, obviously trying to look pitiful.

Hermione wavered. It had been an awful day, what with walking in on Ron like—like that. And the kids were almost looking like their normal selves again. Hermione found herself unable to deny them, even though the prices were sure to be outrageous and the sugar and fat content just as astronomical. “Fine, you can take a twenty out of my wallet and buy yourselves something,” she said as the kids cheered and ran off with her purse towards the treat stand, “but don’t spend more than that!”

They were so cute, looking closer to four and six than the teenagers they now were. A smile softened her face and she realized that she’d been grinding her teeth as she walked. It was good to see the kids rebounding after the trauma and listlessness of earlier. She’d pay a lot more than twenty pounds and some potential cavities for her children’s happiness. If only she knew how much her own happiness was going to cost going forward.

Sighing, she wandered down to the fiery sculpture on the edge of the pond. A small plaque identified the glass sculpture as “Summer Sun” by contemporary American artist Dale Chihuly. She could see the sun in the chaotic shape of it now, though she still thought it looked like a tree on fire or one in the autumn, blazing bright right before all of the leaves fell off and died. Sometimes she felt like she was dying inside too, living only for her children and Harry but ravaged and numb to everything else in her life.

She’d been refusing to see—or too exhausted to admit—that her marriage to Ron had been dead long before this morning’s incident, her love for him dead even longer. She’d failed at life and love. Hermione Granger wasn’t allowed to fail. She always had to have an answer…but right now she was empty. Lost. Looking back, she’d given up everything for Ron and this marriage—the best years of her life, her passion, her work and ambitions, even her self-respect, twisting herself inside out and upside-down, and all for a man to whom she would never be good enough.

Ron and his family spent years breaking her down into more easily digestible pieces and she’d let them, but all for what? So Ron could cheat on her after almost twenty years of marriage with some bint half his age and toss all her sacrifice into the bin? Carelessly breaking her children’s hearts? She didn’t know if she could ever forgive him. Just the thought of seeing him again made her feel both homicidal and nauseous.

Yet despite all that, he’d been one of her best friends once. She’d loved him once. And he’d loved her too…once, but not for a long time and never, she could now see in hindsight, unconditionally. She’d been so wrong about Ron. Hermione hated to admit that she was wrong. Even when the bad days had outnumbered the good, she’d buried her head in the sand and refused to admit that she’d been wrong to trust Ron Weasley so much and wrong to marry him. Over time, she’d lost all illusions about the goodness and strength of his character, but still she’d stayed, too browbeaten to fight back and too scared of what would happen, afraid that the laws were still twisted in a pureblooded man’s favor when it came to granting divorce and child custody against a female muggleborn witch. She’d gritted her teeth and endured, becoming more worn out and exhausted with every compromise.

Hermione used to be so openhearted and brave when she was young. She wished she could be that hopeful young witch again, not afraid to take on the world as long as she believed she was right. It had been a long time since she felt that right about anything. If only she could go back in time and do it all differently. She’d have never married Ron or given up her ambitions and bowed to Molly Weasley’s demands. She would have fought harder not to lose herself.

Tipping her head back, she looked up at the fiery sculpture of Summer Sun overhead. She had been a blazing sun once, but had let herself turn into a dying tree, rooted in the past and rotting from the inside out. She felt like she was in the autumn of her life, losing everything that had once made her so proud, drained of all vitality and usefulness. Regrets crowded her thoughts like carrion birds watching over a dying animal as she hunched her shoulders and wrapped her arms around her waist, hugging herself tight.

Laughter echoed on the breeze, prompting Hermione to look over her shoulder and up the hill. Rose and Hugo were sitting on a table, kicking their feet and eating ice cream. As Hermione watched, Rose reached out and dabbed ice cream on her brother’s nose, giggling when he went cross-eyed and tried to lick it off with his tongue.

Hermione felt her heart swell and her eyes go tight with tears, the good kind finally. Oh, how she loved them! Her children were the one good thing she’d gotten out of those years with Ron and she could never regret that. Hermione had always prided herself on her loving and loyal heart. She’d put up with the torture and betrayal of being married to him all over again for those two sweet faces eating ice cream up the hill. They were worth it.

Straightening up, Hermione took a deep breath and exhaled. Time to end this pity party. Her life had not been worthless. She was not worthless and nor was her life over with. Supposedly witches could live to almost 200 years old. She was only 40, for Merlin’s sake! She had plenty of time to course correct, turn Ron into a minor footnote in her biography, and regain her place in the sky—a blazing sun once more. She was going to be fine, she just needed time.

Hermione was going to survive this.

“Excuse me, young lady, but could you take a photo of me and my wife?” Looking up, she saw an older gentleman wearing gray slacks and a matching waistcoat over a lilac button-up shirt with the collar open and the sleeves rolled up. His hair and beard were completely white except for streaks of black bracketing either side of his smiling mouth and laugh lines radiated from the corners of his eyes. He was standing arm in arm with an older woman with short lilac-streaked hair and a fashionable draped lilac jumpsuit cinched at the waist by a long mint green silk sash printed with pink, white, and purple cranes and chrysanthemums.

“Of course,” Hermione said politely, turning their way.

“Oh thank you so much, let me just get out my phone,” the woman said, reaching into her embroidered mint green purse and almost spilling the contents out onto the ground because of the large bamboo hat hanging off of her arm by a strap getting in her way. A long, shimmering gauze veil hung from the hat and trailed onto the ground. The hat looked Asian, like something Hermione had seen in historical accounts or on fantasy movie posters. She hadn’t thought it a modern accessory. “My husband Ander and I like to take a picture at this spot every time we come here,” the woman confided with a quick smile. “It’s so majestic and fantastical.”

“Are you from London or somewhere farther afield?” Hermione asked curiously.

The man chuckled and turned to his wife. “Laurine, she’s confused about the scarf and hat.”

“I love my bamboo hat,” she said stoutly. “I got it and the scarf on vacation in Hong Kong last year from a lovely little shop. See?” she held it out. “It looks alluring, like I’m a heroine in one of those fancy Chinese sword dramas.” Giving up on the purse for the moment, she shoved it at her husband and plopped the hat on her head to pose. The hat had a wide brim and was open on the top, perhaps for a tall bun to poke out of like they used to wear in some of the older Chinese dynasties. Some of the woman’s lilac hair popped out of the top, surrounded by a shimmering gauzy white fabric over a pale latticed bamboo structure that closed at the front. Laurine fluffed out the attached fabric. “You can roll the fabric back to keep your face clear,” she demonstrated, “or close it to look mysterious and shade your face.” The fabric fell from the wide brim on all sides to float around her shoulders, over her back, and halfway down her chest, obscuring her features and form. “I think everyone in London should be wearing one to protect them from sunburns, help with social distancing, and look more stylish.”

“You do look lovely and mysterious.” Hermione was amused by the whimsy.

Parting the veil with her fingers, Laurine winked at Hermione. “I knew I liked you.” They shared a smile.

It made Hermione wonder how Luna Lovegood was doing. She hadn’t seen or heard from her in ages, ever since Luna and Ginny had had a big row when Luna had secured a job internationally at a magical nature reserve and Ginny threw a jealous fit. Last Hermione heard, Luna was flourishing and dating a fellow magizoologist. She hoped she was still happy and doing well.

“We were going to take a photo?” Ander prompted them with a smile.

“Yes, yes, one moment, dear,” Laurine said in a sing-song. Pulling off the hat, she shoved it into Hermione’s arms. “Here, you can look at it while I search. The veil on the hat matches your gauzy red dress ever so nicely. I’m telling you, you should get one.” Taking her purse back from her husband, she walked to the nearest table and started searching through it.

Shaking her head, Hermione wound the gauze up around the brim of the hat to keep it from trailing on the ground, accidentally catching her trailing sleeve in the hat fabric and having to start over again from scratch after untangling them.

“Sorry about that,” Ander chuckled. Looking over his shoulder, he leaned closer to Hermione and quietly said, “I know the hat is ridiculous, but my pretty wife likes it and wants to wear it everywhere, so what can I do but indulge her?” He held out his hands and shrugged.

“She’s lucky to have you,” Hermione said, rotating the hat in her hands.

“I’m the lucky one to be married to my best friend and the love of my life.” Ander looked at his wife with a soft, adoring expression that made Hermione feel wistful and sad.

He turned back to her. “What about you? That’s quite the statement necklace. I saw Laurine eyeing it appreciatively. Did your beau give it to you?”

Hermione had forgotten she was still wearing Ron’s old Egyptian necklace. For a little while it had made her feel pretty. Now she wanted to take it off and chuck it into the pond, but there was no way to do so gracefully now that the man had called attention to it. “Oh, thank you,” she said vaguely, trying to keep her expression pleasant.

“Oh, fiddlesticks, I can’t find it! Did I leave it in the car?” Laurine called fretfully, stuffing things back into her purse with an anxious expression.

Quickly striding toward his wife, Ander said, “Maybe it’s in the side pocket or the hidden zippered one in the back? Did you check those?” He leaned over the table and started searching. “You have so much stuff in here, I’m sure you just overlooked it. Let’s both look again.”

The sun was hot on Hermione’s back. She was trying not to get impatient or jealous of the sweet couple. London was going through a heatwave this summer and she could feel a trickle of sweat dripping down her spine despite her lightweight robes. Maybe she should’ve worn white instead of the deep burgundy red. She thought about discretely casting a Cooling Charm, but her wand was still in her purse up the hill with Rose. Sighing, Hermione used the bamboo hat to fan her face. A cloud passed over the sun and for a moment she felt relief from the heat. It was tempting to put on the hat and see if the shade it cast helped keep her cool.

Up the path she saw a man crazy enough to wear a long hooded cloak in July. He must be roasting, even with the pale color. She couldn’t tell if he was dripping with sweat or not because the hood cast his face completely in shadow except for his chin. Movements frantic, he turned his head from side to side as if searching for someone. He’d probably be able to see better without the cloak blocking his peripheral vision, she thought critically, though she hoped he found whomever he was looking for so desperately.

Just as she realized that a man walking around London in a cloak was probably not a muggle, the hooded man turned in her direction and froze. A second later he jumped forward, shouting, “Look out!”

∞⌛∞

∞2020, July 3—the Auror Department∞

~Harry Potter (39)~

Dark red blood ran down Harry’s finger in a fat drop, plopping onto Hermione’s bookmark where he’d placed it on his desk. He’d pulled it out to mark his place in the report he was reading just before accidentally breaking his favorite mug. Two more drops followed in quick succession. “Oh, bloody hell!” Harry shoved his bleeding finger into his mouth and jumped to his feet. Ignoring the broken mug on his desk and the puddle soaking into the report, he frantically reached for a tissue and scrubbed it over the bookmark, trying to get the blood and liquid off before it was ruined. “Please, no,” he breathed around his bloody finger, grabbing a fresh tissue. “Son of a—piece of—” He cursed under his breath with increasing vitriol as the blood stubbornly stained the paper. Three drops didn’t seem like a lot until they were smeared over your most important treasure.

“You’d think you were mortally wounded instead of getting a little cut during the meeting’s coffee break,” Auror Dugald Ranson teased, white teeth flashing through his fluffy red beard.

“Potter’s been mugged. We should file a report,” said Auror Gerty Yamaguchi, her deadpan delivery making Ranson almost fall over with laughter.

“Ha ha,” Harry gargled around the finger still in his mouth.

Yamaguchi was famous for her deadpan humor around the bullpen. Harry usually appreciated it except when it was aimed in his direction. She had dark, almond-shaped eyes and shiny black hair pulled back into a bun and secured with a hairstick decorated with a black cartoon dog. The hairsticks were always sharp, sometimes poisoned, and doubled as weapons. They were also all decorated with sweet little cartoon animals. Harry had learned not to ask. The animals might be sweet, but Yamaguchi’s temper wasn’t.

Taking pity on him, Ranson brought over a trash bin and he and Yamaguchi started picking up the shards of his broken mug to toss inside.

Harry scowled around his finger, tempted to bite it off in a temper for daring to betray him by bleeding so much. The water had wiped off easily enough, but blood still stained the surface of Hermione’s bookmark. Leaning over, he folded over the tissue to the clean side and wiped at the bookmark again, but the red wouldn’t come off. A dribble of pink saliva dripped off the back of the hand in his mouth and splattered onto the bookmark, getting it wet all over again.

“Oh, pixie piss,” Harry cursed, popping out his finger and holding it out to the side while he grabbed a fresh tissue to mop off the bookmark again. When the bookmark was as dry and clean as he could make it, he tucked it safely into his front pocket before getting another tissue to wind around his still bleeding finger. He’d have to wait for the end of this pointless meeting to do more. He didn’t care so much about his finger, but the bookmark was priceless. Hopefully he could figure out a way to remove the scarlet stain before Hermione caught sight of it and got upset.

“You’re ridiculous.” Ranson shook his head. “It’s just a wee bookmark.” He slid up to sit on a nearby desk.

“And a wee little boo-boo,” Yamaguchi said seriously, opening Harry’s desk drawer and pulling out one of his small bandages pre-dipped in dittany.

“That’s not the only thing wee and little on the lad.” Ranson wagged his brows.

“That’s not what your last girlfriend said when she walked in on me in the showers,” Harry shot back, not bothering to look up as he took the bandage from Yamaguchi with a, “Thanks,” and smoothed it into place on his finger. Three members from the Obliviation Squad walking past heard the exchange and broke into laughter.

Gurgling, Ranson slid off the desk. “You’re so cruel to me, lad.”

“That’s not what you said yesterday when I shared my lunch,” Harry said mildly, still distracted. He’d been feeling off all day. He could feel the dittany knitting the skin back together slowly. The bandage had been old and must’ve started to dry out. It felt extremely unpleasant. This day just couldn’t get any worse.

“Emergency alert,” a voice called across the bullpen. “We need a team dispatched. There’s been an incident at London’s Kew Gardens, injuries unknown but at least one suspected fatality involving a magical citizen. The portkey is being prepared while a team assembles.”

Harry’s perceptions went razor sharp. Jumping to his feet, he rushed to join the team about to leave, followed closely by Ranson and Yamaguchi.

Hermione, Ron, and the kids had gone to Kew Gardens today. Harry had a horrible feeling that something had happened to one of them. He just prayed that if the fatality was real, it was Ron and not one of the others.

It wasn’t until a long time later that he remembered to feel guilty for the uncharitable thought, though by then he was so angry and wracked by grief that the guilt didn’t even register.

∞⌛∞

∞2020, July 3—London’s Kew Gardens∞

~Hermione Weasley (40)~

Before Hermione could react to the hooded man’s warning, something sped past her face and slammed into the statue behind her with a loud BOOM, followed by a sharp tinkling sound. Looking up as if in slow motion, Hermione found herself surrounded by glittering blades of fire as the Summer Sun fell from the sky in an explosion of red, yellow, and orange shards of glass. They fell all around her body and into the pond below, sending water into the air in glittering sprays.

It was almost pretty until a large piece hit her cheek and neck, slicing down. She blinked and found herself lying on the ground without knowing how she’d gotten there. The pain came next—sharp and fast—not just her face and neck but everywhere, her gauzy burgundy summer dress no protection from the cuts. Looking at her outstretched arm still holding the asian hat, she saw her skin sparkling like diamonds with a fine coating of glass, blooming with bloody rose-red furls and stems.

Perhaps the sculpture had been fire and not glass at all, for her skin felt like it was burning as it turned as red as her burgundy dress. Distantly she heard screaming, though the rushing of blood in her ears mostly drowned it out. Was it that nice couple screaming or her children? Where were her children—Rose and Hugo? Were they safe? She had to find them. She had to.

Hermione tried to get up, but when she started to turn the edges of the wound on her neck burst apart like a broken zipper. Scalding blood spurted up onto her cold cheeks and down her chest. It was agonizing and terrifying. Her vision went spotted as she pressed an unexpectedly clumsy hand to the wound and gasped for breath that didn’t seem to want to come anymore, fumbling as the golden chain of the Egyptian necklace caught on her fingers, slowing her down. She tried to press her hand harder against the wound to stem the bleeding, but with each frantic beat of her heart she could feel hot fluid pumping out through her increasingly cold and weak fingers. Her hand became too heavy to keep in place. It slipped down, coming to rest on the small rectangular pendant lying on top of her heart.

Where were her children—Rose and Hugo? Ron couldn’t be trusted with them. Liar. Traitor.

She felt cold and weak as her body began to shut down. Her eyesight tunneled, becoming a swirling vortex dotted with black, but she refused to give into the icy darkness. She refused. Overhead the white sun burned into her eyes as the dark tried to close in. The necklace on her chest felt blistering, like touching a hot stove. She tangled her fingers into it and held onto the pain. Pain meant life.

Despite her best efforts, the world turned dark.

Hermione refused to go. Her children needed her. And Harry—she couldn’t leave Harry. It would break her bookmark promise. She loved them all…too much…to leave. Rose…Hugo…she needed…to find them. She needed…she needed…she—

died.

∞⌛∞

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