The Wrong Time

The Wrong Time

Hermione looked at the clock on the wall. Ron was late coming home again. It was the third time this week. She knew why he was late, but she could not bring herself to admit it to anyone. She walked to the nursery and peeked in the doorway. The baby was asleep. She knew he would be, but she had to give herself something to do. She could not think about her wayward husband or her crumbling marriage.


Rose and Hugo were both at Hogwarts, and she found herself lonely, even though she had Josiah to keep her company. She had chosen not to return to St. Mungo’s until Josiah was old enough to attend Hogwarts, but she needed her independence, no matter how much Molly frowned upon it.


She had set up a basement lab, where she was manufacturing potions. Not just your average healing tonics and Pepperup potion, no, she was making much more advanced potions, like Polyjuice, Felix Felicis, and Veritaserum. Such complicated potions gave her plenty of time to care for Josiah, who was nearly two years old now, and also quadrupled what her profit would be for the average potions. Overall, her life didn’t seem to be lacking anything.


To the careful observer, however, it was quite evident something was wrong. She was lucky there weren’t any careful observers in her life.


She walked to the bathroom and studied her reflection. She didn’t look a day over twenty-five, even though she was forty years old. Her mother always envied that. She had explained to her time and again that because she was a witch, she wouldn’t hit middle age until she was in her seventies. Jean Granger still envied that.


Hermione splashed some water on her face, and thought about the last twenty years of her life. She had married Ron twenty years ago, and things were good then. Well how could they not be? They had just saved the world together. They thought if they could go through all of that together, then they could make it through anything. She had never anticipated that she would be here.


Here, where she was the mother of three children, two of which were teenagers. As much as she loved Josiah, he was certainly not a planned child. Rose was sixteen and Hugo was thirteen. She remembered when she told Ron about Josiah.


“Ron?”

“Yeah?” he had asked, not taking his attention away from the wireless, where they were announcing the scores of the last Cannons game.


“I’ve been to Healer Thorpe today,” she had said, tentatively.


“So?” he said still distracted.


“Well we’re going to have another baby,” Hermione said, a little exasperated at his ignorance.


“What? Oh, that’s nice, Dear,” he had said, casually, still absorbed in the sportscast.


Hermione wiped at a tear that threatened to spill over her cheek. She had known even then, that he was cheating. As time wore on, she found that she minded less and less.


She went into their bedroom and took her lace nightgown down from its hook. There was no point in waiting any longer. He would be at Lavender’s flat for at least two more hours, and she didn’t want to hear his drunken excuse anyway. She turned down the sheets and climbed into bed. She wondered when they had fallen out of love.


They loved each other, sure, but she wondered when they had stopped really loving each other. The kind of love where no one else mattered. She stopped herself. Had they ever really had that kind of love?


She thought maybe she had felt her breath catch in her throat once. She felt that undeniable need to hold another person in her arms and let the world fade away, but as quick as it came, he was gone. She remembered the way her heart had crumbled when she saw him there, broken and bleeding. After all he had been through , she somehow felt he was invincible. Turns out, he was only human, just like the others who had perished all those years ago.


She felt the tears spill down her cheeks now. She had not thought about the fallen for a long time. She allowed herself to cry for them, to mourn the lives they did not get to have. For one instant, one fleeting instant, she felt she would trade her happy ending to give one to any of them.


She dried her eyes on the backs of her hands. She thought about Severus again. She remembered the look of desperation as he demanded Harry take the memories flowing out of the wound in his neck. She had seen that look one other time, when he had shielded the three of them from the changed Remus Lupin.


She closed her eyes and thought of the last time she had seen him. His dark hair fell in shiny curtains around his face. She thought of those black eyes that seemed endless. He was younger then than she was now. It was with these thoughts that she drifted into a sleep, filled with visions of her days at Hogwarts.

A/N: Ok, I know I have an unfinished story in the works, but it just seems so meaningless now. I feel like I have to write this before my muse can go back to normal. I feel like I had to do this. Please Review.