My Everything

Victoria's Monologue

Author: Lissanne
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended
Summary: Following on from the other monologues, this one is from the perspective of Harry and Hermione's daughter, Victoria.
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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My name is Victoria Weasley. Tomorrow, I will become Victoria Byrne. Twenty five years ago, I was born Victoria Potter.

Those names belong to three of the most important men in my life - my father, my husband-to-be, and the man who gave me life.

Each plays his own important role in my world. I love each man for different reasons.

Ron Weasley is my father. He is not my biological father; that much is obvious when you look at me. With my raven hair and green eyes, I am the image of Harry Potter. But Ron raised me as his own child; he held me when I cried, made me laugh when I was sad, shared in my joy when I was happy. He's treated me no differently than his own biological sons. Were it not for my appearance, nobody would know he wasn't my biological father.

Thomas Byrne is the man I have chosen to spend my life with. He is courageous, smart, handsome and charming. He swept me off my feet and made it easy to fall in love with him. He is quiet almost to the point of shyness, he's good with children and animals, and he does a mean Elvis impression. I love him to bits.

Harry Potter was my biological father. The man responsible for one half of my being. I inherited not only his looks, but his Quidditch talent. Grandpa says I'm a lot like him, personality-wise. I can talk to Grandpa freely about Harry. I call him Harry, because I'm not comfortable calling him Dad, even though he was my father. I have a Dad whom I love very much. Mum told me once that when I was growing up, I would call them "Daddy Ron" and "Daddy Harry" if talking about them at the same time. Now that I'm older though, they're just Dad and Harry.

I do miss him - Harry. I miss the idea of him, anyway. I've often wished I'd known him. Between what Mum and Dad and Grandpa have told me, he was a wonderful man. He knew Mum was carrying me when he died. I know this brings Mum a great deal of comfort. From what I've been able to piece together over the years, she took his death very, very badly. Some thought, in a way, I saved her life - if she hadn't been pregnant with me, she wouldn't have had a reason to want to go on without him.

They had that kind of love, Mum and Harry. The one written about by playwrights and poets. The kind of love you only read about in fairy tales and see in romantic, feel-good movies. The kind of love they say you're lucky to experience once in your lifetime.

When I was sixteen, I went through a period of self-discovery. Wanting to know who I was, where I had come from. It was during this time that I discovered a lot about Harry. I asked questions of everyone who'd known him - Grandpa (Sirius), Grandma and Granddad (Dad's parents), Nan and Pop (Mum's parents), Ginny, Draco, various Weasleys, Mum and Dad and Harry's old school friends. Somewhere deep inside me, I felt like I would never know the real me unless I knew everything there was to know about Harry. I wanted to know about his childhood. I wanted to know about the man who'd fallen in love with my mother.

I was a bit reluctant at first to ask Mum about him, because sometimes she seems a bit fragile when it comes to Harry. She has the occasional bad day, even now, and he's been dead more than half her life. When I was a teenager, I would sometimes find her in her study, staring at the picture of him that sits on her desk, or going through the albums she put together for me when I was a baby, full of keepsakes and mementoes. Occasionally I would hear her talking softly to him, telling him about me and how beautiful and smart I was and how proud of me he would have been. On special occasions  - his birthday, their wedding anniversary, the date of his death - Mum would lock herself away somewhere quiet and sit for hours, pouring through the albums and laughing and crying. Dad never once complained when she did this; he would simply wait until he thought she was ready to face the world again, then go in and hold her while she cried in his arms. Once she was okay, they would come out and everything would be back to normal.

My father is an incredible man. How many men would have been able to pull themselves together after losing their best friend of thirteen years and look after his pregnant widow who just happened to be his other best friend? On top of his own grieving, he had to bear my mother's as well. Grandpa once told me that Mum would simply have wasted away if Dad hadn't been there to make sure she was eating and going to the doctor's and whatnot. Grandpa has a lot of respect for Dad for being there for Mum when she needed him most. I once asked Grandpa if he was mad at Mum for marrying Dad, and he said he couldn't have been more thrilled. I then asked him if he thought Harry would have minded, and I remember, even now, how his eyes misted over and his voice sounded heavy when he answered, like it was a struggle. He told me that he was sure Harry would have been happy that Mum had found love again and that he would have wanted her to find someone else to grow old with since it couldn't be him.

I think we both cried a little then. It's times like that where I feel the most sadness over his loss; when I hear about how much he loved my mother and how he never got to grow old with her. After his lousy childhood, if anyone deserved to grow old and be happy, it was Harry Potter.

I am proud to be Harry's daughter. I'm sorry I missed not being able to get to know him. I'm sorry he won't be here to see his grandchildren. I plan on telling them about him as my parents told me; I think it's important that my children know about their grandfather and the kind of man he was.

Earlier tonight, I sat with Dad on the porch swing and we talked about love and life and loss. And for some reason, I needed to hear about Harry. So I asked Dad what Harry would have thought about Thomas. I could tell the question startled him, but he took a deep breath and said he was sure Harry would have approved of Thomas wholeheartedly, like he and Mum did. He then confirmed something I'd suspected all along - that Thomas is a lot like Harry. He has some of Harry's mannerisms. I've caught Mum gazing wistfully at Thomas a few times, and now I know why. She was seeing Harry.

I told Dad how much I regretted it that Harry wasn't alive, because based on everything I'd been told, he'd been a wonderful man. Dad agreed quietly, and something in his eyes made me reach out and take his hand in mine. I wanted Ron Weasley to know how much he meant to me, so I told him that although Harry had been my biological father, I considered him to be my real father - the man who raised me and loved me like his own. I also told him I loved him very, very much. It'd been a long time since I'd seen my father cry - he always gets misty eyed when he's holding Mum after she's had a bad day and misses Harry and is sobbing in his arms - but tears formed in his eyes so I put my arms around him and cried along with him. I heard him whisper that he loved me too and he couldn't have asked for a better daughter, and that made me want to cry even more.

To have been conceived by two people who shared something so special, so rare; to have been raised by such a wonderful and loving man who has never once made me feel any less important to him than my brothers; and now, to be marrying my soul mate - I surely must be one of the luckiest women on earth.

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