The Burrow

Disclaimer: I am happy to report that JKR created and owns the Potterverse.

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'Oh, Mrs Weasley, let me take that. You'll have your hands full with the cake.' Hermione hurried forward to relieve Molly of the tea tray.

'Thank you, my dear. That would probably be best, now that I think of it.' Molly beamed. 'I suppose I may be a little too attached to doing everything myself. At least that's what Arthur says, though in my experience, more hands don't necessarily mean more help. You, however, I can trust.' She winked.

Hermione smiled, though inwardly she thought Mr Weasley had a point. It was only a tea tray, not a box of explosives. Mrs Weasley was an absolute dictator in her house, and Hermione often had trouble seeing the point of all her fuss.

She certainly didn't think Mrs Weasley had done her sons any favours by not teaching them to cook and clean. God knew it would have been nice if, during the war, Ron had shown a tenth as much interest in cooking as he had in eating.

And Fleur adored Bill, but three years into their marriage, she was fed up with his domestic incompetence. Last night, after everyone else had gone in, Fleur, Penelope, and Hermione had lingered in the garden in the soft darkness, drinking wine.

'Eet's like 'e ees surprised every day to learn eet ees 'ees 'ouse too, and zat food needs to be cooked. 'E is like a, how do you say, like un petit oiseau, waiting for maman to feed 'eem.' Fleur snorted. 'Do I look like 'ees maman? Non, and I never shall. I am ees wife and ees equal.'

'Exactly,' said Penelope, huddling forward in her chair and slurring her words the tiniest bit. 'Equal partners. I work even longer hours than Percy does, but whose flat is a tip? His. I've stopped going over there, and he knows why. I don't know if it's sinking in, or if he's holding on to a fantasy of how it will be once we're living together.' She gulped her wine and frowned at her lap. Her wedding was in four months.

Hermione, of course, was thinking of the flat Ron and Dean shared. It was profoundly filthy. She'd stopped going there, too, even though her living at home with her parents didn't afford her and Ron much privacy.

'Good luck weez Percy,' Fleur said, shaking her head. 'Beel ees trying, but eet's like part of 'ees brain just...never grew.'

'He's been Mollycoddled,' Penelope said darkly. 'Our men are deeply Mollycoddled.'

Hermione giggled.

'What ees Mollycoddled?' asked Fleur.

'It means they've been babied and spoiled,' said Hermione. 'It's a real word, it just happens to coincide with the source of the mollycoddling in this case.'

'MMs...Mollycoddled men,' said Penelope, pouring out the last of the wine. 'It's lucky for them they have so many good points.' She raised her glass. 'To our MMs. May they Mature Markedly.'

The other two women had raised their glasses. 'Ear, ear,' said Fleur.

Maneouvering the tea tray through the kitchen door into the sunny garden, thinking of last night's conversation, Hermione sighed. Ron, she thought. Mollycoddled Ron.

Penelope and Percy were on a blanket on the grass, Penny propped up on her elbows and reading from a fat folder of parchment, Percy asleep with a book over his face. As Hermione passed them on her way to the table, she glanced down at Penny's file and stopped abruptly, jolting the tea tray and sloshing the very hot tea out onto the tray and over her hand.

'Ouch!' she yelped, and stumbled over to the table with the tray. She crammed the burnt part of her hand in her mouth and started sucking on it. 'Owowowww,' she moaned around the hand.

Penny jumped up, scattering parchment, and drew her wand. 'Let me see.' She held her hand out and Hermione let her look at the burn.

"Lenio," said Penny with just the tiniest movement of her wand. 'There. Good as new. Yes?'

'Yes,' Hermione murmured. 'Thank you.' She grimaced. 'I do know Lenio, of course. I've used it a dozen times.'

'It's hard to remember things when you're in pain,' said Penelope sympathetically. 'Your intention gets so scattered.' She turned to the tea tray and siphoned the tea back into the pot. 'Shhhh.' She grinned. 'Molly never needs to know.' She went back to the blanket and began gathering up the scattered pages.

'That file,' said Hermione hesitantly. 'Is that...Professor Snape's medical record?'

'It is, yes.' Penelope looked as though she was about to say more, but she didn't.

'Is there...is he....did something happen?' Hermione swallowed hard. What if there had been some change? Not death, though...Penny wouldn't be reading the file if he had died. Would she?

Penny hesitated still, perhaps considering how much she should say. Healers needed to be discreet at all times and, with all the publicity surrounding Snape's trial and exoneration just beginning to die down, everyone connected with his care was especially circumspect.

Hermione felt very awkward. 'It's just that I... you know that I... I was, um...'

'I know,' said Penny quietly. 'I know you found him. I know...you visit him.'

'Yes.' Though it had been more than a month since she'd gone to St Mungo's.

Ever since the day after the final battle, when he'd been transferred to St Mungo's, Snape had been in a coma. At first, it was medically induced...the damage was so grave, so complex, and the healers put him under.

And then...he didn't come out of it. Not after a month, not after a year and more. He breathed and his heart was beating but that was all the sign of life he gave. The healers said there was no apparent damage to the brain, and no reason they could name that he should still be comatose. But he was.

Week after week she'd visited him, often accompanied by Harry, sometimes by Ron, too, in the beginning. Harry went by himself sometimes. And others visited, too, in the first months...Order members, Hogwarts staff, some former students, mostly from Slytherin. Half the time she visited, it seemed, someone or other sat at his bedside.

Then, as the rumours about the nature of the memories he'd left gained currency, more and more people started sending him flowers and gifts (and sometimes time-release Dung Bombs and rotten vegetation) and even trying to get in to visit him.

He would have hated it all, of course. Though in a tiny corner of her own mind she nursed the belief that he would not mind her visits. She and Harry were among the few still allowed in to his room; with Professor McGonagall, they were his most faithful visitors.

Ron didn't visit anymore. He thought it was 'pointless and morbid.' He actually used the words 'greasy git' once in an argument that had started about something else altogether and had somehow got on to her Tuesday evening visits to Snape.

And a month ago, on the second anniversary of the final battle and just three weeks after the vindicating verdict, she'd been preparing to leave for the hospital. Ron, angry she wasn't coming down to the Burrow, shouted, 'He's never waking up, and even if he did, he wouldn't want to see you! What the bloody hell are you trying to prove?'

'Nothing!' she'd yelled back. And it was true, and that was a daft question. Daft. Still, she'd decided to prove she had nothing to prove. And she'd stayed away since that day.

A month. She'd refrained for a month from sitting by the bedside of someone who lay like a stone and who, if he'd known she was there and had the power to speak, would have insulted, wounded, and dismissed her...just as he'd done when he'd been her teacher, when he'd sacked her as his assistant.

Why did she miss those visits so much? It made no sense. But she did miss them, she really did. She didn't have anything to prove...she simply wanted to sit beside Professor Snape, reading her book in peaceful silence. She would start visiting him again, and Ron could like it or not.

Penny spoke. 'I'm his new primary healer, that's all. Hortense Grex-Dinkle has been his healer the past two years, but she's just retired...and moved to Tahiti, of all things; I think an aunt died and left her a pile of Galleons. Anyway, I'm familiarising myself with his case.'

'Oh! Well, I suppose I'll probably see you there. Because, yes, I do visit him. I've read that regular visits can be beneficial for coma patients. What is your opinion on that?'

'There's certainly some research to support it.' Penelope nodded. Then she looked down at the pile of parchment and riffled it. 'One thing reading this file is demonstrating to me is that I need to do more reading on the subject of the care of comatose patients. There's one protocol Hortense established that doesn't make any sense to me. I'm sure it's based on good practice, just no practice I'm familiar with. I've owled her with some questions. I wonder how long an owl to Tahiti and back will take...'

'Mmmmm Penny,' Percy murmured. He slid the book from his sleep-flushed face and squinted up at his girlfriend. 'What time is it?'

'Nearly four, Dozy. There's tea.' Penny smiled and bent down to kiss him. 'Want some?'

'Mmmmm-hmmm.' Percy blinked and reached for his glasses. 'Wait. I'll get it.' He pushed himself up to sitting, stretched, and stood. 'Want some, Hermione?' he asked, moving towards the table.

When he turned his back, Penelope clasped her hands over her head and shook them like a victorious fighter. She grinned at Hermione. 'Progress,' she mouthed.

Hermione gave her a thumbs-up. 'No, thank you, Percy. I'll go and tell the others. Where are they?'

'Let's see,' said Penny. 'Ron and your dad went with Arthur to the garage to look at some... I want to say bicycle parts? Harry and Ginny went for a walk to the tree house. Bill and Fleur and your mum went into the village. I think they all know to be back by four...oh, look, here come Ron and Arthur and your father. And Molly with the cake!'

Mrs Weasley was indeed in sight, walking down from the house bearing an improbably tall chocolate cake.

Magnetised to the cake and groaning about his thirst, Ron declined to come with Hermione to fetch Harry and Ginny. So David Granger tucked his daughter's arm through his own and they set off towards the great oak that held the Weasleys' ramshackle old tree house.

Hermione smiled up at him. 'How were the bicycle parts?' she asked.

Her father shook his head. 'Well, there were a lot of them. Also motorbike parts, prams, and a small mountain of roller skates and skateboards and miscellaneous wheels and gears. That garage is amazing. It looks like a little shed on the outside, but inside it could be a warehouse.'

'I know. Harry gave Mr Weasley that expansion spell as a present last Christmas...they're very expensive. At least the permanent ones are. The piles were starting to creep out into the garden, and Mrs Weasley was not happy about it.'

'Cheers for Harry, then,' said Dr Granger. 'Making both his future in-laws happy in one stroke, eh?'

'Oh, yes, that's Harry. Though they'd be happy with him if he gave them each a second-hand deck of cards. They love him to pieces.'

'And what did you give them for Christmas, sweetheart?'

'A second-hand deck of cards, of course. To share. Some of the cards might have been missing.' She grinned, and ducked her head under a hawthorn bough that overhung the path. It was delicious to her, bantering with her father on a beautiful summer's day.

Things were getting better. Things were getting good. They had been so hard for so long.

Her parents' anger and hurt when she had restored their memories had nearly broken her heart. She quailed whenever she remembered the hope and dread of those first few hours, when she and Bill and Cressida Lamb from St Mungo's sat in the Grangers' lounge in Melbourne, helping her parents through the transition, Cressida monitoring their brain function as the neural pathways blocked by the Obliviate re-formed. And they had re-formed, thank all the gods ever named.

Other things were not so quick to mend.

Her very serious and proper mother had come back to herself quite soon...before they even left Australia, she had assured Hermione that she understood, that she was proud of her, that she forgave her.

But her kind, funny, patient father had remained withdrawn and irritable. For the first two months, he was plagued with migraines, and he slept twelve hours at a stretch. Over the next few months, he improved, but slowly. He returned to work. He went back into his garden, a place he loved. He and his wife began to socialise again, and he reported to Cressida that he was now able to talk to friends and neighbours about their sojourn in Australia without wanting to run from the room or smash something.

And above all, he began to warm up to Hermione. His expression lost its distance, and smiles lit his eyes again when he looked at her. Finally, in one of their family sessions with Cressida he had embraced his daughter and wept, rocking her in his arms and whispering that she was his brave, good girl and that he loved her so much.

Her father was himself again at last, and today he was walking with her on the path through the meadow beyond the Burrow's garden. It was heaven.

'They love you to pieces, too,' he said. 'Arthur and Molly.'

Hermione blushed. She wondered what Mr Weasley had said to him. 'They do, I think. They did even before Ron and I... Well. They've always been very fond of me. I know they'd be happy if I m-married Ron'...her cheeks and neck were on fire...'but they also realise that we're very young. I mean, um. They got married very young, and Harry and Ginny are even younger than I am, and they're engaged, but I don't feel any pressure from Mr and Mrs Weasley to, um, to do that.'

Yet, she added in her head. After Percy and Penny's wedding this year, and Harry and Ginny's next, Hermione had a fair idea where Molly Weasley's laser-like attention would turn.

Dr Granger gave a little grunt. 'That's good. You know I like Ron, but you have the rest of your education to think about, and the start of your career. There's plenty of time for settling down later, when you're closer to thirty than twenty.'

Translation: you can do better than Ron, thought Hermione. She was sure her father hadn't lied...he did like Ron. And he wanted her to finish at university and settle into a career. But Hermione knew (because her mother had told her so, in the gentlest terms) that her father thought it was no match, and that she (her mother) agreed.

But there were things her parents just couldn't be expected to understand. Her history with Ron. The things they had been through together. How could she ever contemplate being with someone else? Who could ever know her so well?

And she loved him, Ron. He was dear, nearly all of the time. And he loved her. They were good together, in a way that made perfect sense to Hermione even if her parents couldn't quite see it.

Thankfully, they had arrived at the tree. She dropped her hand from her father's arm and walked forward under the canopy. 'Harry!' she called. 'Ginny! It's teatime!'

In a moment or so, Harry's tousled head showed over the railing. 'Okay! We'll be right down! Ow! I mean, we'll be down in a few minutes.'

Hermione looked down so he couldn't see her grin or her blush. She had little doubt what Harry and Ginny were doing up there.

Still, she called, 'D'you want us to wait for you?'

'No!' Harry said. 'Go on, we'll follow.'

She turned around. Her father had wandered back along the path. As she went to join him, a memory overtook her, of a time when she had come upon Harry and Ginny unaware. And had stood mesmerised, unobserved and on fire. The two of them, together... any words she'd since tried to find had failed. It was like the best of the books she'd used to read, times ten thousand. It was everything. She'd felt pierced and undone. She'd felt ravenous.

She'd tried, that night, with Ron, to find something that met the hunger. But she hadn't known how to ask for the something, because she couldn't even name it, and Ron had been eager if puzzled, and she'd ended up feeling rather desolate and vowing she would keep her expectations in check from now on.

It was just that... now she knew that that didn't only happen in books. Real people really had that. Sometimes they had it in a tree house on a summer afternoon.

Hermione sighed. She was a few paces behind her father now, and she called out. 'Dad! They're going to follow us.' She caught up to him and matched his stride. 'Let's go and see if Mum and Bill and Fleur are back.' She hooked her arm in his.

He whirled around and yanked his arm away. His face was pale and damp, and his eyes were wild. 'Don't!' he yelped. 'Don't touch me!'

'Dad!'

'Don't you...I don't...You! Who are you? Why are you following me? Why can't you leave me alone?' He was staggering back from her, and then he was down on the ground, jerking in the tall grass and making a horrible keening sound.

'Daddy! Dad! Oh god, Dad!' Hermione fell on her knees, and as she reached out her hands to him, he went rigid, and his eyes rolled up. She grabbed his hand, then fumbled to find the pulse in his throat. It was high but strong.

Penny! She needed Penny!

She leapt to her feet and ran back towards the tree house, screaming for Harry.

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A/U: Lenio = soothe.

Gentle readers. I'm so sorry it's been an age since I posted. Life's not giving me much time for writing these days. Love and thanks to hechicera and lifeasanamazon, always.