Chapter Nineteen

Disclaimer: Everything belongs to JKR. This is all for personal fun and enjoyment.

A/N: Shug is amazing -- she's cheerleader and beta all wrapped up in one, and she's spent a lot of time today going over the chapter and smoothing my feathers. *muah* Thank you, dear.

*

Tears fell from Hermione's eyes. "And then I was back."

"What did you do?" Rose asked softly, slowly.

"I tendered my resignation to Pierre. He sold my flat to a new employee. I went back to Paris once to say goodbye to Cosette and Pierre. Cos helped me move out and then into my new flat in London. That was when she met them all, the first time," Hermione said. "We kicked Ron and Harry out after a while, though, and James was fussing so Ginny had to leave, so it was just Cos and I." She sighed. "We cried a lot, talked things over. We knew things had changed, but we weren't about to let each other go. That was one thing I learned. You never let the ones you love go prematurely."

"You let Severus go right when he said –"

"What was I supposed to do, Rose?" Hermione exclaimed. "He said it – months after he'd known it. And he refused to act on it – refused to compromise."

"Did you expect him to?" Rose asked softly.

Hermione paused. "No, no I didn't." She sighed. "I know I made mistakes. I know it. I was young and impatient and I had finally, finally realized what I wanted... I tried to foist it on him. I wanted him to be something he wasn't, and as uncompromising as he was, as stubborn, as ill has he treated me at times, the subject of commitment – he never said he would. Then again, he didn't send me away. Who's to say which of us is to blame? I stayed with him anyway; I thought I could change him." Hermione looked at her daughter straight on. "I left England because I didn't know what I wanted. I didn't know who I was. I left Severus because I had realized what I wanted, and it was something he couldn't give me. I had grown up."

"And you were gone."

"I was gone. I had gone home."

"Not to shift gears." Rose shifted in her seat uncomfortably. "But... what about Dad? What... happened?"

Hermione stilled, clearly thinking about what she was going to say. "Grief – it does things to a person. Grief intensifies every emotion. That first week after Molly's funeral – trust me, Rose, your dad and I didn't leap into some rebound relationship right off or jump in the sack –"

"Mum!"

"Well, we didn't," Hermione said stubbornly. "That week – love, rage, pain. Everything came out. It was volatile. We knew we had to get things sorted out, and we would yell and scream and cry and shout. It's always been like that, goodness, since we were kids; even then – opposites attract," she said wryly. "Trust me, he asked me every question you could possibly think of that week, and I was honest. And I asked him about the whores and the boozing, and he was honest, and we raged at each other. Harry and Ginny left us alone to sort things out. Going back was anything but easy, but I wasn't about to step into some self-made fantasy created by my own desire or denial. No, if Severus taught me anything – and that relationship taught me a lot – it was that you deal. You take the emotions and you deal with them and you take active steps towards growth – you do not let yourself simmer in denial and fantasy of what could be or what could have been. And you don't pretend to feel something you don't, and you don't hide what you feel. Skewed relationships – that's what that makes for. You need open, honest, and direct communication. You need to be on the same page and have a similar vision for the future in order to last."

"And you and Dad did?"

"I wouldn't have married your father under false pretenses, Rose."

"It's just – Severus –"

"I had fallen out of love with him by then, Rose," Hermione said, tearing up again. "When you come to full awareness of how ill you've been treated, of how little they are willing to compromise – when you stop denying the truth, when you step out of the fantasy – well, once I had been in Britain for scarcely a week I knew that while I still loved him, I could never risk that again."

"But –"

"I did still love him. Deeply, passionately. But it was a remnant of what it had been, and it was a small love, broken, burned, bruised – it had bled out on the floor before my eyes. I carried memories and pain and somewhere in those things there was love, but I did not want anything to do with him."

"You and dad –"

"Got engaged quickly?" Hermione raised an eyebrow in challenge. "I've always made quick emotional turns, and after a few months, it became relatively clear that marriage is what your Dad and I wanted."

"So you got back in March, engaged in June, and married in August?"

"And pregnant in August. Don't forget that part."

Rose looked away.

"Your father and I loved each other, Rose." Hermione reached for her daughter's hand. "We wanted to marry each other and we knew why. You weren't an accident. The marriage was not a mistake, and I never considered it one. You and your brother – your dad." Hermione sighed. "You three – our family – it is one of the few things in my life that I look on with complete contentedness, with the irrevocable knowledge that for once, I did something wholly right. Your dad and I did something few people accomplish – we loved each other, and we built a life and raised two of the most beautiful, talented children, until death do us part." She wiped at her eyes. "I would not have traded any of you for the world, and I never considered going back to France. Never."

"Did you ever miss it?"

Hermione sighed. "When I would visit Cos, of course, I inevitably lamented that we were so far apart. I fucked up my family's relationship with her family royally, as well, I fully admit. But I never wanted that life back. I never considered leaving."

"If I hadn't been born –" Rose started, trying to sort things out.

"Rose, stop," Hermione said firmly. "Don't even think that. I had months to decide that marriage wasn't the answer – months and three fantastic girlfriends who held my feet to the fire, challenged my desires, my wants, emotions. Trust me, they left no stone unturned. Do you think Ginny, Luna, and Cosette – not to mention Harry – would have let me marry Ron if they were not absolutely certain of my reasoning?"

"Well, you're their friend."

"Have you forgotten the first thing I told you? Think back to the conversation I had with Ginny the day that I left," Hermione said slowly. "There was no other man then – I did not feel anything remotely romantic for Severus, mind, merely fascination, and I had no hope in hell of ever finding him. I surprised myself by leaving so quickly. Anyhow, Ginny was still prepared to pull out all the stops to make sure that my reasoning, my emotions, were fully in line with Ron's. Now, multiply that conversation times ten, picture us having it four or five times, and you have an idea of what it was like several years later."

Rose nodded. "Okay. Okay."

Hermione squeezed her hand. "Your father was my dearest friend, and I will apologize to no one for what we had."

"You loved each other," Rose said.

"Yes, my darling, we did," Hermione said softly.

And Rose started to cry.

*

Hermione tucked Rose in her childhood bed a half an hour later and made the slow trek across the house to her room. She was still in her work clothes. God, it was late.

Yes, she reflected. She and Ron had loved each other.

Had she been in love with her husband though?

Yes – no – yes and no. What did "in love" mean, anyway? At different points in their marriage, she had been crazy in love with him. She would dare any woman to watch her husband dance their newborn daughter across the hospital room and not feel utter joy and contentedness. It was one happy memory among many.

The passion and craziness came and went. They had had passion, certainly, especially in the early years. But it had never been a constant in their marriage, never like she had shared with Severus, which was fine with Hermione, because that sort of intensity was explosive – it wreaked havoc, caused trouble. She was unwilling to let herself feel like that again.

She and Ron – she had loved him – still loved him – deeply, devotedly, down to her bones, but how could she have told her twenty-year-old daughter that she had not always been in love with her husband without Rose taking it to mean that her parents' love was somehow fake, somehow less, and it had never been either of those things.

There were some things better left unsaid. Some secrets of the heart best left undisturbed.

She passed by Ron's bedroom that he'd kept these last few years, tracing her hand along the door as she walked by, willing the tears away.

*

Rose lay in bed and stared at the ceiling, trying desperately to fall asleep and failing at it miserably. She wished she could say that hearing her mother's story had made something "click," that the mysteries of her parents' marriage had come screaming to light, that now she understood the whispers and secrecy –

The thing was that she'd never seen whispers or secrecy, never suspected anything amiss.

There really hadn't been anything amiss.

Her mum had come back, and that was that.

Life had gone on.

The story – well, it made her parents' story more complicated and remarkable than the Hogwarts Sweethearts storyline, but still... what had drawn her parents together, what had kept them together...?

There was no new revelation there.

The story had been a drop in Rose's mental bucket labeled 'Mum' – that pond had rippled out, washed up over the banks, but receded, eventually lying still as it always had.

Her mother. The changes made a difference in her perception of her mother, which meant that her perception of her parents' marriage had changed, as well, she supposed, but...

Her parents had married each other knowing exactly what they were doing, knowing exactly who they were marrying and why.

Her parents had grown up and reunited in the life everyone had always expected them to have.

Only this time, they both knew why.

It gave Rose a new respect for her dad.

And her mum –

Rose sighed. She had no idea what she thought.

She turned over and pulled the covers up about her. How do you love two men?

Her mum hadn't ventured an explanation on that, really – had only said that she was in love with Severus and then out of love with Severus and then... loving Ron, marrying Ron.

And now...

Now her dad was dead.

Her mum had never said if Severus was alive. But she'd have mentioned his death. Sweet Merlin, Rose thought, he's still alive.

What now?

*

Hermione was getting ready for bed in her room. She had already decided that telling Rose had been absolutely the right thing to do.

Time to undo the damage.

She'd just finished writing to Cosette, Harry and Ginny, and Luna, telling them that she'd told her daughter and that they were to be on their guard for visits from a certain Rose Weasley, but that they could tell her anything they liked.

She went to her vanity to take off her jewelry when she noticed the blue box, still sitting out in the open – the blue box that had started it all. It was a miracle, in retrospect, that Rose had only seen the one letter. The box contained far more damning evidence, after all.

She ran her fingers across the smooth woven lid – it was every shade of blue, beaded and beautiful. Severus had bought it for her in India.

She lifted the lid. There – Ginny's letter, right on top. Then the bundle of letters from Ginny, the ones from Ron and Harry beneath. A photograph of Cosette, Pierre, and herself in Florence at the café on the deck where they'd been that fateful day before the conference. Cosette and Henri's wedding pictures. Photographs of Claire.

Her pearls. The cards from the florist.

His letters.

Notes from those years and –

The ones from after.

Letters he had written her.

His handwriting. She traced a letter with her finger, following the jagged scrawl as it zipped across the parchment.

She lifted the last photograph from the bottom of the box.

A photograph of her and Severus dancing at Pierre's birthday party.

Heavenly Day, she thought. God, she looked young. Then again, so did he. How old would he be now? She snorted – it wasn't like it mattered. He was barely entering wizarding middle life now, as it was. He'd live until he was a hundred, at the very least. His body had been to hell and back, but he was powerful, and that certainly counted for something in a wizard's life span.

Sixty-five, she thought. She was forty-six; Severus would be sixty-five.

She waved her hand, and the contents of the box all flew back in, perfectly arranging themselves as they had been before. She replaced the lid and pressed, making sure it was shut, sealing what, exactly, she did not know. She put her hands on the vanity and sighed. She looked up at herself. There were lines – laugh lines, optimistically – but they were there. She had already gone through menopause, but then, her mother had also gone through it in her early forties.

Widowed. Merlin. She was forty-six with two grown children, a phenomenal career, and – widowed.

Ron was gone.

She felt stripped of her defenses. Vulnerable. Open.

She was as alone now as she had been at twenty – Rose's age, she thought.

Come to think of it, it would be good to be alone for a while.

A while – what? She shook her head and pressed her hands to her face. Get a grip, she told herself. Get a bloody grip on yourself. She picked up her robe, slipped her arms through the sleeves, and went to sit out on her balcony, overlooking the hill.

What could she be waiting for? No Patronus was coming. No, those only came with the letters for big events – marriage, anniversary, children, promotion.

Death.

She knew what she was thinking, and she hated herself for thinking it.

The correspondence had been sporadic over the years, always letters and Patronuses sent by him...

She had never contacted him or returned a correspondence.

She wouldn't. Couldn't.

She had loved Ron.

Passionate love had never been her way. She was never exuberant with anyone. Except with Severus. She had never shown such virulent love towards anyone else...

She and Ron had trusted each other, completely, unequivocally.

She had expected a lifetime – had looked forward to a lifetime with her dearest friend.

Fate clearly had other plans.

She Summoned a bottle of brandy and a glass from the kitchen. She'd already consumed a massive amount of wine over the course of the evening, but she didn't care.

The moon was full, and it was high. Its beams danced intermittently across her house, across her lawn – oh, this space. She loved this space. The moon shone brightly on the trees in the nearby forest. It was a well-lit night.

A full moon.

She gripped her glass tightly.

A cure for lycanthropy had been released on Hermione and Ron's first anniversary. It had been discovered, papers said, by an anonymous and independent group of researchers on the Continent.

Harry hadn't confirmed Severus' involvement until well after Hugo's birth, but she had known all along. Nearly every Minister in the world had lauded the discovery, praising the group's intellectual prowess and devotion to research – "... having traipsed the globe, spending weeks and sometimes months away from their families..." Kingsley had said.

And it had clicked.

Hermione had got drunk that night.

It didn't absolve him by any means, but still...

Andromeda Tonks had thrown a party in Remus' posthumous honor. Teddy had been – Hermione did the math – ten years old. He was twenty-nine now – married to Victoire Weasley-Lupin and with twin daughters to boot.

Everyone had grown up. It had happened slowly and quickly at the same time.

It was a different time, Hermione reflected. There were practically no werewolves in Britain. No significant Dark Threat had risen since Voldemort – several imitators had come along, but none had amassed nearly that level of power or done near that level of damage, and all had been quickly vanquished.

Neville was Headmaster. Nearly all of Hermione's Hogwarts professors had retired. Vector still taught Arithmancy, but she was nearing retirement, and her apprentice was ready to take over.

A different time.

She had grown.

Had he?

Well, he was older, too. Older, perhaps wiser. He had apologized, had respected her boundaries, had kept up with her career over the years. Had always respected her wishes. There had been ten years where there was no communication, because she had told him to stop. That period had broken with a congratulatory Patronus on her promotion to Department Head five years ago.

Cosette rarely mentioned him, even though Hermione knew he was close to their family and had become a trusted confidante of Henri's over the years.

Hermione had only to remember Claire, animated at her childhood birthday parties, where she always had a gift from Severus, where she lamented his absence from her dinner.

That Cosette had let him so close to her family spoke volumes, or so Hermione thought. That Claire held such a tender love for her "Uncle" –

Hermione couldn't imagine it, and Cosette made sure to not enable her imagination.

That corner of her heart had been so assiduously locked away, and she had been sure to keep it that way.

Stop it, Hermione!

She would meet him professionally in a month or two. Kingsley demanded it, so she'd go to France to meet with the powerhouse group that had discovered cures, created groundbreaking new potions, and was now dabbling with the properties of Veritaserum.

Severus.

Hermione rose and walked back into her bedchamber. She couldn't think about it. She wouldn't borrow trouble. Trouble would be at her doorstep soon enough.

She breathed in deeply as she turned down the covers.

*

A/N: We are within a few chapters of the end. I hope you are enjoying the story -- reviews are always appreciated. :-)