Chapter Text
Hermione had read a book once – back when she still read for pleasure – about an old woman who remembered two separate and conflicting accounts of her own life. The narrator had made a decision in her youth, one single decision that would shape the years and decades to come, and two paths had diverged in that moment, blossomed into whole separate lives with friends and children and careers all their own. In her old age the woman remembered them both, with great confusion and distress.
It had been a sad book, and a hopeful one.
Hermione had been thinking about her parents when she first picked it up, about the two separate lives that existed in their memories – though of course the one set, the real set, was forever locked away from them. They were happy in Australia, she had made sure of that, but the life they were living was not their own.
She had thought about this book often in the early years after the war. There had seemed to be so much time back then, so much time for grieving, so much time for thinking. This was before Harry and Ginny had left, of course, before Arthur’s illness and Molly’s deep, debilitating grief.
It was odd that when Hermione thought of it now – in the dark and quiet moments when she woke in the night with her heart pounding and Ron’s arm like a weight over her chest, the small, clear moments that filled her with a terror she did not understand – she thought of her own life.
There was the life she had planned: the degree in international law, the internship at the ministry, the hours and years of study and work. In that life she had been going to change the world, she was sure. There had been languages to learn and spells to master and books to read. In that life she would have loved reading them.
And there was the life she was living: her marriage to Ron, the little house she kept for him with the herb garden out back and the tiny veranda. The empty nursery. Sunday dinners with Molly, late evenings helping balance accounts for the joke shop. Weekdays at the Ministry yes, but only in the smallest, sleepiest department: the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office. A small life. A cozy life. A life that filled her with an overwhelming joy, except when it didn’t. Except for those brief, strange moments where it didn’t.
Try as she might in those moments, Hermione could not see how her two lives had diverged. How that had become this. She could not reconcile the girl she remembered with the woman she had become. Some nights she woke up feeling as if the room, the house, the world had filled with water while she slept. As if she had been drowning without knowing it, drowning for years now, and if she could just break free, if she could just reach the surface…
Tonight was one of those nights.
Hermione had struggled free of Ron’s embrace before she was truly awake, came to herself halfway across the room. Where was she going? She staggered to the window and threw it open, choked down deep, ragged breaths of the night air.
“Something’s wrong,” she whispered.
“Hermione.” Ron’s voice was thick with sleep. “Come back to bed, love.”
There was fog in the garden. The cool air on her damp skin was rejuvenating. “Something’s wrong,” she said, loudly this time. Where had all this fog come from? What was on the other side of it?
“Hey.”
A hand on her back. Ron’s hand. She leaned into it from force of habit, but it felt too hot. Too soft. She wanted the slap of the night air, the chill of the rough boards under her feet.
“Come on,” he said.
He sounded so calm, so confident. Hermione let him lead her down to the kitchen, sat obediently at the table while he fussed over the stove. She could not think. Ron’s broad, freckled back was to her. They had been married seven years now and she knew every inch of him, had spent actual hours of her life drinking in the sight of those freckles. Her husband was a beautiful man.
Watching him now she felt the familiar pull, the helplessness with which she stared, and panicked.
“This is all wrong,” she said as he turned towards her again. She was not sure what she meant by “this,” but was somehow certain that Ron did know.
“Get this down you,” he said, and put a glass in front of her.
Warm, honeyed milk. It was what he always made, when she got like this. Hermione took it uncertainly. It was always too sweet. She had never cared for the taste of honey, but Ron was so often right about what she needed. It always helped. It always calmed her down. Maybe, once she had calmed down, she would be able to fight her way up to the surface of her own thoughts. Ron would help her.
Hermione drank her milk.
Her breathing slowed. The fear faded. She looked over the rim of the glass at her husband, feeling embarrassed. Ron was smiling. Helplessly, feeling a warm glow rise up inside her, Hermione smiled back.
“Alright?” he asked.
It was like someone had plucked a string that ran down the length of her spine; the whole of Hermione’s body reverberated, tuning itself to the sound of that beautiful voice. She had to close her eyes for a moment. And then his arms were around her, and they were again the arms of the man she loved: safe and strong and warm.
“Alright,” Hermione told him. “Take me back upstairs?”
She knew what would happen next. He would lead her up to their small room, their narrow bed. He would make sleepy, gentle love to her on top of the covers. Afterwards while he slept she would lie with one hand on her naked belly and look at him: his beloved face, his big, square hands. She would be filled, as she was now, with so much love that there would be nothing else.
No books, no memories, no questions.
Just a love so deep it was drowning her from the inside, and she could not understand why she had been afraid.