Chapter Text
Harry stood by the window, running his hand through his messy black hair, the afternoon light shining into their living room. His wife Hermione sat at the dining table, surrounded by stacks of parchment and books, quill moving frantically. Normally she wouldn’t even be here but she had to come home early because there was some repair work being done in her department that will be fixed by tomorrow and she couldn’t even be bothered to go up to her home office. Instead she just put her work down at the dining table and started writing without even a hello to her husband. She only stops to use her wand to summon a book from her office or drink her coffee.
“You missed dinner again last night,” Harry said quietly. “I waited for an hour.”
Hermione didn’t look up. “I told you I was busy. This legislation won’t write itself.”
“That’s what you said yesterday. And last week.” Harry turns to face her. “When was the last time we actually talked? Not about work, just... us?”
“We’re talking now, aren’t we?” Hermione snaps, finally looking up with bloodshot eyes, her face gaunt, her eyes with very dark circles under them.
Harry sighs. He has constantly tried to feed Hermione when she was home. Little things at first, leaving sandwiches by her papers, setting a plate of her favorite biscuits near her elbow while she worked. He’d wake up early to make her proper breakfasts that would go cold as she rushed out the door with just a cup of coffee. Last week, he’d even enlisted Luna’s help to prepare her childhood comfort foods, hoping the smell of her mother’s recipes might tempt her away from her desk but it was as if she hadn’t noticed.
During the nights she was here, he’d bring her tea laced with calming draught, hoping she might rest for just a few hours. Sometimes he’d find her asleep at her desk, quill still in hand, and carry her to bed only to find her gone before dawn. He’d bought her a special enchanted blanket that would warm when she worked past midnight, a gentle reminder to come to bed.
The kitchen cupboards were filled with nutrient potions he'd mix into her drinks when she wasn’t looking. He’d sent lunch by owl to her office, though he suspected most went untouched. Two days ago, he’d practically begged her to eat a bowl of soup, standing over her until she took three spoonfuls before claiming she was ‘too busy’ to finish.
Harry’s voice cracks slightly. “Look at yourself, Hermione. When did you last eat a proper meal? Or sleep more than four hours?”
“I’m doing important work!” She insists, not seeing his point.
“More important than your health? Than us?” Harry shakes his head. “If you want to work yourself into the grave fine, I guess I will just have to get used to the idea of being a widower.”
Hermione’s quill dropped from her fingers. “You don’t mean that.”
“I do because clearly my brilliant wife is being too stupid to notice she is killing herself.” Harry’s voice contains a bitterness that surprises even him. This situation has been going on for months and this is the first time he has said anything like this.
Hermione glares at her husband. “Don’t you dare call me stupid, Harry Potter!” She slams her hand on the table. “You have no idea the pressure I’m under, the expectations I have to face to make this perfect. Why you would say such a preposterous thing is beyond me.”
“Because I love you!” Harry shouts back, raising his voice at her for the first time in a very long time, certainly for the first time in their two year long marriage. “Because I keep hoping the woman I married will come back to us!”
“I am right here!” Hermione gestures wildly at herself. Her wedding ring slid loosely where it once had fit snugly, another sign of just how much weight she has lost.
“And you have the nerve to act like I’m the only one missing their lives!” Hermione shouts at her husband, standing from the table. “As if you’re any better with your schedule as a Hogwarts professor!”
Harry goes completely still, his green eyes wide with shock. His mouth hangs open for a moment in sheer disbelief. "Hermione, we had this conversation four months ago. You don't remember?"
The silence that followed was deafening. Hermione's mouth opened and closed, no words coming out as confusion clouded her features. The grandfather clock in the corner ticked loudly.
"What conversation?" she finally managed with a small voice.
Harry's expression softened with concern. "Back when you got your promotion. We sat down right here at this table and talked for hours about what it would mean for our family."
In Hermione's fuzzy, hungry, exhausted, mind, she starts to remember a conversation about her promotion back in April.
"You were worried about the twins," Harry continued gently. "About how your new position would mean longer hours and more weekends at the office. And I suggested that maybe one of us should be home more consistently."
"You... you offered to resign from Hogwarts," she said slowly, the memory come back to her more clearly. "I told you that you loved teaching. That you shouldn't have to give it up."
Harry nodded, relief crossing his features. "Yes, but I pointed out that your promotion was a once in a lifetime opportunity. That the Department of Magical Law needed your reforms and you would make enough for us to live off of. And that McGonagall would always take me back when the twins were older, I could even start as a teacher again in their first year."
Hermione sank back into her chair, her legs suddenly weak. "And I... I agreed to it? To you becoming a stay at home father?"
"You were hesitant," Harry said quietly. "You asked if I was sure about twenty times. You kept saying that you didn't want to take that away from me. But I insisted. I told you I wanted to be there for every moment with Beatrice and Sirius."
Hermione's eyes filled with tears as fragments of the conversation returned to her. "You said... you said you never had parents to watch you grow up, and you didn't want to miss a second with our children."
"And you cried," Harry said softly. "You hugged me and said it was one of the reasons you loved me so much."
‘I don’t understand,’ Hermione thinks to herself. ‘How could just I forget that Harry quit the job he loved? Forget a whole life changing conversation like this. What else have I missed? Wait, if that happened in April and April was four months ago then...’
“You didn’t remember our anniversary three weeks ago or my birthday the day before that.” Harry continues quietly
Hermione slowly looks over at the calendar on the wall and, sure enough, the date today is the 22nd of August, exactly three weeks after their anniversary. Their anniversary. The day they had promised to always put each other first. The day they swore their eternal love for one another. It was Hermione’s idea to make the day after Harry's birthday their wedding day, to help make up for all the birthdays he had to go through living at the Dursleys. Harry just gave an amused shake of his head and agreed.
“I made reservations at that restaurant in Hogsmeade,” Harry continues, clearly thinking back to that day. “The one where we had our first date in the sixth year. The one where I asked you to be my wife. I waited two hours before coming home to not even find a letter from you about how you were not leaving the ministry that night. Again.”
“Harry, I…” Hermione’s voice dies on her lips. She could see it now, Harry dressed in his best robes, sitting alone at a table for two, checking his watch as minutes turned into hours. The candle on the table burning lower as people at neighboring tables cast sympathetic glances his way.
‘How could I forget? I promised him that I would never forget his birthday. I’ve NEVER forgotten his birthday.’ With shaking hands, Hermione pulls out her planner from her pocket and, sure enough, marked down is Harry’s birthday and their anniversary; the anniversary part even includes a later note about where and when they were having dinner. ‘I’ve always marked down Harry’s birthday in every new planner I get, it’s the first thing I do when I get one. I’ve been doing that since I was twelve... when was the last time I even looked at this planner?’
She looks up at her husband with wide eyes. “Harry, I didn’t realize…”
“No, you didn’t.” Harry cut her off. “You don’t realize anything anymore, Hermione. Not when Sirius said his first word. Not when Beatrice said her first or second word. Not when Beatrice started floating her toys. Not when I stopped sleeping because I was up all night with them both while you were working.”
Hermione felt the blood drain from her face. “Sirius and Beatrice both spoke? Beatrice did her first magic?” The words came out as a whisper. Her little boy, with Harry’s untamable hair but her brown eyes, had spoken his first word without her there to hear it? Her little girl, someone Harry jokingly said was a mini-Hermione except she has his eyes, already saying her second word and doing magic?
“I told you about both instances but to tell you again, Sirius said ‘dada’ two weeks ago, as did Beatrice.” Harry said, his voice hollow. “Beatrice is enough of a mini you that her second word was ‘book’ but Sirius hasn’t said anything else yet. Beatrice also made her stuffed unicorn fly across the nursery last Tuesday. I took a picture of the magic, it’s on the mantle.” He gestures to a collection of framed photographs Hermione hadn’t bothered to look at in weeks.
Hermione’s gaze follows his gesture, landing on a magical photograph she hadn't noticed before. In it, a stuffed unicorn floated across the white nursery while a little girl with a tuft of brown curls and green eyes clapped her hands in delight while a boy with Harry's black hair and her eyes stares in wide-eyed wonder.
“I also took my memories of what happened with her and Sirius and placed them in vials for you to look at.” Harry adds absentmindedly. “If you had ever felt like looking at our children growing up… there are a lot of vials you haven’t looked at.”
“I... I’ve been busy,” she said weakly, as if that could be an excuse.
“Too busy for your family?” Harry’s voice was quiet but he might as well be shouting at her. “Too busy to remember that your husband turned twenty-one? That it was our second anniversary? That your children are growing and changing every day without their mother? Is your job at the Ministry really that important?”
“That’s not fair! I’m securing their future!” Hermione returns to her feet. “You don’t understand how important this legislation is!”
“More important than watching your children grow up?” Harry challenged, a rare anger showing in his eyes, an anger that has never been directed at her. “More important than your marriage? Insisting that your work is important is what you have been doing since before you even got caught up in writing that legislation.”
“Don’t you dare question my priorities! I’m doing all of this for us!”
“For us?” Harry laughs bitterly. “When was the last time you even held the twins?”
Hermione’s mind raced to recall the last time she’d held her babies.
“I…” Her voice cracked. She gripped the edge of the table as the room seemed to tilt sideways.
‘My God, when was the last time I touched Harry?’
Hermione tries to remember when she last initiated contact with her husband that wasn’t perfunctory. ‘When was the last time I truly reached for him? When I held his hand just because I wanted to feel his skin against mine? When was the last time I truly kissed him?’
She couldn't remember that either.
Harry took a step toward her, concern clear on his face. “Hermione?”
The realization hit her like a bludger to the chest. She couldn’t remember. She honestly couldn’t remember when she’d last held her own children or truly touched her husband out of love rather than habit. She can remember doing it sure, plenty of times, Sirius loved being held by her more than he did by Harry, and she can remember doing a lot of things with Harry but she isn't sure when the last time was.
"Don’t,” she whispered, holding up a trembling hand. Sweat beaded on her forehead as she feels like she is drowning under the shame and exhaustion. The world before her blurred, her stomach feels as empty as it actually is.
‘I’m a failure as a wife, as a mother…’
“I’m trying to help you,” Harry said softly, reaching for her. Always so soft, so kind, even when she didn't deserve it.
Something inside Hermione broke, there was too much guilt for her to handle and her mind, weakened by weeks of hunger and exhaustion, sought the easiest escape, to push away the mirror that showed her her many failures.
“Get out!” The words tore from her throat, raw and desperate. “Get out of my house if I’m such a terrible wife and mother!”
Harry flinches as though she’d slapped him. “If that’s what you want,” he whispers.
Hermione wanted to take it back immediately, to throw herself into his arms and beg forgiveness, but for some reason she couldn’t force the words out, as if she had been hit by a petrificus spell, even as Harry turned away.
With his shoulders slumped, he walked toward the door. No wand because it is still on the counter next to his cup of tea that he was waiting to cool, no nothing. The bright and cheery day seemed to mock him. A framed photo of their wedding day caught Hermione’s eye from the side table, both of them laughing as they cut into the cake, her in her wedding dress, him looking at her as if she were the most precious thing in the world. Her parents, who flew in from Australia where they now live, had been so proud that day, her father crying as he walked her down the aisle. Despite being confined to a wheelchair, George had been the best man and wheeled himself down the aisle under his own power. Luna was the maid of honor and was crying in joy the whole time.
Hermione watches, frozen in place, as Harry’s hand reaches for the doorknob. A tiny voice in her head screams at her to stop him but still she couldn’t make herself do it.
The soft click of the door closing behind him was the most devastating sound Hermione had ever heard. The crack of apparition soon followed.
Hermione stood frozen, the enormity of what had just happened washing over her like ice water. She’d told Harry to leave. Her Harry, who had faced death for her multiple times, who had never given up on her, who never left her despite there being better choices, who had been raising their children while she buried herself in work. Her first boyfriend. Her first kiss. Her first love.
“Harry,” she whispers to the empty room, her voice breaking as tears began to spill down her cheeks. “I didn’t mean it. Please come back.”
But only silence answers her. Photos of happier times stared accusingly from the shelves and walls. Photos of their wedding day, Harry holding newborn twins with wonder in his eyes, the four of them picnicking by the Black Lake after Harry became a professor. Moments of joy that Hermione had been gradually absenting herself from. From the nursery upstairs, she hears the faint sound of one of the twins beginning to cry.
Hermione stood frozen, torn between chasing after her husband and tending to her children, the children whose lives she had barely been present for. The realization crashed over her like a wave, leaving her gasping for breath as the consequences of her single-minded dedication to work became devastatingly clear.
She glances at the stacks of books and parchment on the table, her work, the legislation she'd sacrificed so much for. The ink was still wet on some pages, the quill abandoned mid-sentence. ‘Did I really put this before my family? Before Harry's birthday? Before our anniversary?’ The answer to this question is yes.
Her legs gave way beneath her, and she sank to the floor, wrapping her arms around herself as sobs wracked her too-thin frame. The parchment that had seemed so important not even ten minutes ago forgotten, meaningless in the face of what she might have just destroyed.
“What have I done?” she whispered, as the full weight of her words and actions began to sink in. She just threw her Harry out of their home, she had gotten upset at him when he was being concerned about her long hours and never being there for their family. The crying from upstairs grew louder, more insistent, but Hermione couldn't move, paralyzed by the realization that she might have just ruined the marriage she had wanted so desperately once upon a time.