My Everything

The Hermione Monologues, Part 4/7

Author: Lissanne
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: JK Rowling owns Harry Potter. No infringement intended.
Summary: Futurefic, Hermione POV. Hermione reflects on a life full of love, sorrows, joys, and hope.
Thankyou: A huge thank you goes to Debbie for her beta and her support and encouragement. Without her, these monologues would never have seen the light of day.

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Harry has been dead for ten years today, and I still grieve for him.

Our daughter, Victoria, is nine years old, and she is a living reminder of Harry. Not only did she inherit his black hair, which falls halfway down her back, and his green eyes, which she, too, hides behind glasses, but she also inherited his sense of calm. His rationality. His ability to make me see sense of things when no one else could. And she's a natural on a broomstick. I won't be surprised if she goes on to play Quidditch at Hogwarts.

I remember thinking when I first suspected I was pregnant how much I hoped the baby would have Harry's raven hair. I got my wish - but now it haunts me every time I look at her.

It's a beautiful day today, and she's outside with Ron, who's ready to catch her should she fall. Like he's always caught me.

Ron. I married him three years ago. He waited seven long years for me to be ready to take that step. I knew somewhere along the line that he'd fallen in love with me. I was the only woman he ever spent time with. Instead of doing the right thing and letting him go, I selfishly clung to him because I was so afraid to lose someone else that I loved. And I do love him, very much. He's been my rock as I learned to adapt to a life without Harry. Nobody else would have stood by me the way he did.

He moved into the house when Victoria was a baby. It made sense, because I needed to have someone there with me, both for Victoria and to help me through the day-to-day things. I trusted Ron, and he helped me cope with everything. It wasn't straight away though; one night, when Victoria was nearing one, she'd been teething and I'd had a bad day with her and was just exhausted. I must have looked it, because Ron arrived for dinner and took one look at me and ordered me to bed. He offered to stay and get up with Victoria during the night, so I could have just one night of uninterrupted sleep. I think it was the first proper sleep I'd had since Harry died, and I felt a different person when I awoke.

I went downstairs to find Ron on the living room floor, Victoria toddling around him and shrieking with excitement as he chased her. He caught up and scooped her up in his arms, raining kisses on her tiny face, and she gurgled with delight and placed a hand on his cheek. The look of absolute love on his face for this child that wasn't even his own wasn't hard to mistake and, that night, I asked Ron if he wanted to move in and help me raise her.

Our relationship changed slowly; it took me a long time to realise how he truly felt about me, and even longer for me to realise I felt the same. Still, we didn't rush; I wasn't ready straight away to be with another man. To his credit, he never once complained. He just accepted that I needed time. However, I began to love the way he made me feel about myself, and I realised that I craved his touch. I needed his kisses. I needed intimacy.

I remember being so nervous the night I first made love to Ron, it was like my first time all over again. It was different that it had been with Harry - we'd almost devoured each other in our love and lust and desperation to feel our bodies as one. There was no rush with Ron; he made sure that I was ready, both emotionally and mentally to take the big step. And he held me when I cried afterwards, and let me talk while he just listened.

He never pushed the issue about marriage. He simply waited until the day I was ready to turn to him and tell him that I wanted to be his wife. He never asked me. I just knew the invitation was there. We married quietly in a simple ceremony; our only witness was Victoria, who was glad to finally see her mother and father legally wed. It was because of her that I finally realised I did want to be Ron's wife. She came to me and asked why I didn't have the same name as Ron. I explained it was because I wasn't married to him. When she asked me why not, when we lived together and he was her daddy, I realised it was time.

She knows she has two fathers; when she talks about them at the same time, she refers to them by name. She knows Daddy Harry is in heaven, that I used to be married to him, and that he is her biological father. She's seen his pictures, and she knows she looks exactly like him. I smiled the first time she saw Harry's picture and finally understood what part he played in her life, because she confided she'd always wondered why her hair wasn't red like her father's.

We keep his memory alive. We talk about him constantly. Victoria's never uncomfortable asking about Harry, but her questions are not frequent anymore, as they were a year ago, when he was all she wanted to talk about. She has a father; Daddy Ron loves her as much as he does our own small son, not yet one. He's the one she calls Dad. He's the one who's raised her as his own. She loves him as much as she would have loved Harry. A part of me used to be bothered by that fact; the same part that's been slowly dying for ten years. The first time she called Ron "Dad" as a baby left me weeping that night; grieving for the man who should have been there to hear her say it, the man the term should have been directed at.

I changed my name to Weasley after the wedding. Ron told me quietly that he did not mind if I kept Potter; but I realised that from the day I vowed to love and cherish Ron as my husband, I was no longer Harry Potter's wife, I was Ron Weasley's. So I changed my name.

One night a few months after the wedding, I was tucking Victoria into bed and she asked me why her last name wasn't the same as Mummy and Daddy's. I explained that she had Daddy Harry's last name, because it was my name too when she was born, and that Daddy Harry would have liked for her to have his name. She turned to me with her beautiful green eyes and asked in a small voice whether Daddy Harry would mind if she had Daddy Ron's last name, so that we all had the same name. I told her with sorrow in my voice and tears in my eyes that I was sure Daddy Harry would not mind at all, that he'd be pleased she was so lucky to have Daddy Ron in her life, who loved her as much as Daddy Harry would have.

When she'd fallen asleep, I went back to our room, and Ron held me while I sobbed my heart out. Crying because Harry's daughter didn't want his name. I think Ron was both upset because I was, and happy that Victoria wanted to be a Weasley. As he soothed me that night, I realised how lucky Victoria and I were to have him. So we quickly organised for Ron to formally adopt Victoria, and that day was one of the happiest in her small life. After it was legal, she turned to Ron and asked him if she was now a Weasley, and when he confirmed that she was, her face lit up with a goofy grin, like Harry's often did. She threw herself into his arms and told him how much she loved him.

She was overjoyed when we told her she was expecting a baby brother a few years later. As we sat on the hospital bed the night he was born, Ron holding him in his arms, me with my head on Ron's shoulder, we talked about names. We'd discussed it while I was pregnant, but nothing had ever been agreed upon. Ron kissed his son's red head and looked at me, asking me if I wanted to name him Harry. It was at that moment I realised it was possible to be in love with two men at once. I said no. It would have been too painful to have to say that name constantly. As much as I appreciated the gesture, I didn't want to continue living in the past. I had a new life; a new husband, a new baby, a new name. We eventually decided to let Victoria name him, and she chose Christopher because she liked it, and Harry after her daddy in heaven.

And now, I am pregnant again. Ron is ecstatic at the news of being a father once more. He's so good with Victoria and Christopher, and I'm sure the new baby will be just as loved and adored as his or her siblings. Ron and I have both agreed that this child will be our last - we feel blessed with the children we have, and we want to be able to enjoy watching them grow up.

My Everything: The Hermione Monologues, Part 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / Victoria / Harry