Rose’s eyes were still on the ceiling when I checked in on both of them. Ginny and Harry were on the sofas, Albus and James and Lily in the guest room, and me in my room, on the empty bed. Rose was sleeping with Hugo at his timid request . . . even as he snoozed, a tiny tear rested by his little nose. But Rose was awake.
I came in, remembering all the times I had felt heartbroken and lay in my four-poster in the girl’s dormitory, staring miserably at the top of it. Whenever Ron and I were fighting, I’d curl up with Crookshanks and pour my heart out in whispers to the old cat, my wand illuminating the bed I’d called mine for seven years. Six, really . . . abandoning nostalgia, I moved to Rose and stroked her fuzzy forehead.
“Hey,” I murmured, and she turned to me, blinking. When had she started wearing makeup? Most of it had been removed during her morning routine, but there were still lines where her mascara had run. How had I not noticed?
“Go, Mum, sleep, I’m fine,” she insisted, rolling over to watch her brother.
I nodded and turned to leave, then felt my heart crumble, and I came back to their bed, where I snuggled in between my kids, and they both snuggled into my sides.
****
Ginny was making breakfast. She was flipping pancakes lazily with her wand, her eyes red and puffy. Harry, who was making eggs the Muggle way, looked no better. He was breathing heavily, his movements slow. Today was the funeral for the man who he’d been joined at the hip with since he was eleven. I rushed to him and wrapped my arms around his waist, and he patted my head.
“I still have trouble believing it, too, Hermione,” he sighed, reading my bleak thoughts. Ginny glanced over at our embrace, sympathy masked by tender watching.
I stepped back and put my arms around both their necks, kissing each one on the cheek. Ginny patted my shoulder and handed me a plate.
I sat at the table until Hugo came in with Lily, telling his favorite cousin about Ron’s old wireless. It had been the one that we found in Perkins’ old tent when it was recovered from the woods where Snatchers caught us. I remembered Harry with the Stinging Hex, looking downright horrid and misconfigured. I smiled a watery smile, which Hugo returned when he saw it. He went up to Ginny and held his hands out expectantly. Like his father even down to the capacity of his stomach. Figures. Even Rose had inherited that quality, of the constant need to stuff herself. I only prayed that they had taken after Ron’s high metabolism, as well.
Ginny’s face betrayed that her thoughts were identical to mine, as Hugo insisted that she stack the hotcakes higher and higher, before he added several ice-cream-scoop-size dollops of butter to the plate and drowned the entire meal in syrup. Lily timidly hugged her father and accepted a bowl of eggs. She nibbled at her own breakfast while Hugo consumed his grief in food. I found that I had no appetite for the warm, Weasley recipe pancakes that rested in front of me.
I rose when the dynamic trio, Albus, James, and Rose, came in, all looking emotionally spent and sleep-deprivated. Ginny, Harry, and I went out onto the terrace Ron and my father had built the Muggle way four years ago. It overlooked our personal lake, our green swathe of personal heaven, and the makeshift Quidditch pitch Rose and Hugo had been trained on. We’d bought this land a year after Rose’s birth, when it was discovered that Hugo was on the way, and when we realized that we still shared a one-bedroom flat between three people.
Harry sighed and fixed his eyes on the Quidditch pitch with unmistakable longing. My heart broke again. I hadn’t just lost Ron - I’d lost the man that Harry had been when our trio was complete. He’d lost me, too, I knew, the way he watched me when I wasn’t watching him. And together we hurt Ginny, who’d lost her favorite brother, and was desperately trying to hold us to our old selves. She was broken, so broken, and it was all our fault . . .
“Stop, Hermione, it’s not your fault, so stop,” she hissed, and I stepped back shakily, unaware of her ability to perform Legilimancy.
“Honestly, Ginny, I can’t deal with all this anymore,” I admitted hoarsely. “Ron is gone, forever, really gone, not there for me to feel safe, not there for me to come back to when I’m scared of death. Not there for me when my cousin died, or Rose is struggling in school and I have no clue what advice to give her. Without him, I will fail for the first time at everything. Ginny, I can’t live life with Ron gone, Harry still in shock, me being half-dead, and you trying to fix us ALL. I can’t live trying to love Hugo without seeing his father in his face EVERY time I look at him. And because I can’t live with all this, I’m just going to keep hurting people already suffering more. Because no one can help me and that will just drive grief to unthinkable measures.”
I sank into the chaise chairs that decorated our deck. They were a gift from my parents, and the cushions were still in storage for winter. The hard metal rungs dug uncomfortably into my back, and a sudden breeze dug its icy fingers into my arm. I blinked, new tears that burned like fire gathering between my iris and lower eyelid. Life was so unbearable, and the only escape would render those I loved more broken than before. I’d never felt so helpless and without a clue.
Ginny and Harry were gaping at me, and when I turned, there stood the last five individuals that I would have ever wanted to hear that speech - my children, niece, and nephews. Hugo gasped and began to blubber, his tiny eyes leaking great tears. Rose held him under her arm, white as a sheet and blank in surprise. James looked queasy. Lily was sniffling in fear, and Albus was copying her, though in a fashion slightly altered to his personality. I wanted to hold Hugo, but I couldn’t, and he could hardly run to me, as I’d just proclaimed I couldn’t love him without sadness, and the last thing my baby had ever wanted me to do was cry.
Overwhelmed, then black, the world spinning about my head like it did when I was a child, twirling in the entrance to the church that my parents attended as a formality, stopping to catch a breath only to feel like the floor was unsteady.
****
HELPLESS - THE BURROW
****
Audrey looked downright impeccable, as always, her hair shining and her smile just as bright. Percy looked like he was suspended in limbo, a happy, dazed grin on his face as Audrey curled into his side. Ron turned and kissed me, and then winked at Bill, whose arm was around the very large Fleur, whose beauty couldn’t even be drained by pregnancy. Fleur was talking to Charlie’s new girlfriend, an old school flame named Harriet Vallerie. Harriet was a giggling thing with a wide smile, and couldn’t take her eyes off of George. George, of course, was focused on one thing: his darling wife, Angelina Johnson Weasley. Ginny and Harry had long since disappeared to the garden. Mr. and Mrs. Weasley were in the kitchen, “talking”.
“This family just keeps growing,” Ron sighed, his face warm with happiness. I imagined Fred in the corner, a bottle in his hand, happily single, ignorant of the children that slept upstairs in Ron’s old room. Victoire, Teddy Lupin, Molly, and Fred were all very young, although Teddy was the oldest. Teddy was three years old, Victoire two, their birthdays very close, only months apart. Molly wasn’t even one yet. Fred was born a suspicious eight months after George and Angelina’s wedding a year ago, and was now a few months old. Dominique was asleep in Bill’s arms, about the same age as Fred, and Victoire’s giggling little sister. Fleur was in her second trimester with the third Delacour-Weasley child. Molly, Fred, and Dominique would be in the same year at Hogwarts.
Ron turned to me, the kindly family atmosphere choking both of us with pleasure. Even three years out, I had vivid memories of hopelessness and despair whenever this immeasurable happiness overcame me. Had any of us expected this long happy ending?
I was working at the Department for the Care and Control of Magical Creatures at the Ministry, which was undergoing many changes after the Second War. Ron and Harry were climbing the ranks in the Auror Department, Harry especially. Ginny was a star member of the Holyhead Harpies at this point, becoming almost as well-known as Harry as the Harpies defeated the long-time champions, the Tornadoes, with her help. There was rumor of her being the English Seeker in the next Quidditch World Cup.
We were almost there, and I was reveling in how perfect everything had become. Ron knew that I was pleased beyond reckoning, now at this moment, and he knew how to make me happier.
We stepped into the foyer of the Burrow, the sounds of a large and growing happy family becoming muffled between walls. I kissed him softly, up against the wall, clutching his hand, our wedding rings touching as our left hands found eachother between our bodies.
“Hermione,” he sighed. Then he began to chuckle. “Herm-own-ninny.”
I narrowed my eyes at his teasing. “You won, Ronald Bilius Weasley. I’m yours for forever.” Then I met his lips again.
“I feel like that Cheering Charm Harry hit me with in our third year has come back to haunt me,” Ron told me, sighing, as we pulled apart again. “Blasted little Weasleys . . . can’t they sleep in Percy’s old room? Mine was the perfect size for privacy.”
“Still afraid of your brothers’ teasing? Honestly, Ronald, you’d think you’d have grown out of it by now,” I chastised.
He shrugged his shoulders, and we marched outside, casting knowing glances in the direction of our dearest friends, who were laying side-by-side against the old broom shed. The merry tinkling of soft laughter floated from their silhouettes. I saw the glint of Harry’s glasses as he raised his head to look at us. Suddenly, they went silent. I suspected Muffliato.
“I want to complete my happiness,” Ron said then, looking at me as we sat down together, on the wide oak swing Mr. Weasley had made for the little ones. It hung by the old orchard where I’d been forced to join in Quidditch games as a girl.
“It isn’t complete?” I asked him, feeling a tad hurt.
“Have you seen Bill and Fleur? George and Angie? Percy and Audrey? They’re all parents, and they all look like they’re on top of the world. I want that,” Ron whispered. “I can’t even begin to describe to you how much I want that.”
The gravity of his words hit me then. “I don’t know, Ron, can’t we just get a dog for a bit?” I sighed, trying to mask my horror with a small smile. I wouldn’t be qualified for the idea of motherhood if I was the Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe.
His next response was the epitome of why I was madly in love with my husband. “What sort of dog did you have in mind?”
I felt something quiver with in me, something that I realized changed who I was for forever. A child. A baby girl or boy that would play with Ron and Harry on the floor, that would wear clothes that Ginny and I changed every hour, that would ride on the hip of Mrs. Weasley as she went about in the kitchen. I wanted one. “One that’s good with kids, of course.”
And to think, I used to think his ears turning pink was a bad thing.
My Brave Face by grangergirl35
Chapter Notes: Hermione can't spend a night alone, or a morning with her family, and remembers one night at the Burrow, surrounded by family, where Ron asks to grow their smaller one.
Chapter Endnotes: review please :D Next chapter will be up SOON i promise :D