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English
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Published:
2017-09-03
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896
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1/1
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Tell Me Nothing Will Ruin Us

Summary:

Harry, he must admit, has never really thought of Hermione as a mother. There are still some days he thinks of her at seventeen years old. It seems, somehow, off to him, like the final punctuation mark on their childhoods, like the loss of something that once was and can now never be again.

Notes:

For an HP Non-Canon Ships ficathon from 2010. Archiving here.

Work Text:

The blanket, soft and pink, is tied with a pale green bow. Harry brushes a finger along the edges of the ribbon, and wonders if maybe he should have put it in a box.

"Honestly, Harry," Hermione is saying from her seat across the table from him. "We don't even know if it's a girl or a boy yet."

Harry grins, and hopes it looks more genuine than it feels. "I've got a hunch," he says.

"Well, thank you," Hermione says, and politely takes the blanket from Harry and rests it at the bottom of the stairs to be carried up later. In her absence, Harry looks around the kitchen and down the hall to the living room, trying to imagine the extraordinary baby proofing that Hermione will inevitably cast over the house—force fields around kitchen appliances and the like. In seven months, there will be a screaming child in these halls. Harry, he must admit, has never really thought of Hermione as a mother. There are still some days he thinks of her at seventeen years old. It seems, somehow, off to him, like the final punctuation mark on their childhoods, like the loss of something that once was and can now never be again.

“Something wrong?” Hermione asks, reentering the kitchen, her barefoot feet pattering almost silently against the floor.

“No,” Harry says, with a half-swallowed grin. “Nothing at all.”

“You wouldn’t believe the gifts we’ve been getting,” Hermione continues, sitting down. “We’ve been getting things from people I’ve never ever heard of, let alone met. It’s good to know the wizarding world is just as prone to gossip as ever, I suppose.”

Somewhere in the back of his chest, Harry feels a sting as subtle and violent as a wasp’s bite. He didn’t find out through the Daily Prophet, no, but he might as well have. Rita Skeeter published the announcement by the afternoon. The woman still manages to catch everything. It’s not Ron or Hermione’s fault, of course, but Harry can’t help but feel it, like a burn, like the fact that he didn’t know sooner signifies all the changes in them since the end of the war. On some level, he thinks, he has always been afraid of this, of them becoming something he can’t touch. He knows how selfish that is—the guilt of even thinking it creeps over him like ivy on the side of an old home. And, yet, he cannot help but feel the childish, snapping thought.

“So,” Harry coughs. “What are you going to name her?”

Hermione rolls her eyes, smiling a little. “I told you, we don’t know—”

“I told you, I have a feeling about this,” Harry insists. Off her look, he says, “If it’s a girl, what will you name her?”

Hermione narrows her eyes in a look Harry can’t quite read. It does make him feel like an old, creaking book, the kind she used to spend hours in the library dissecting. But that was lifetimes ago, really.

But then the look fades. “I’ve always liked the name Rose,” Hermione says. “We’ve only talked about it a bit, I just — it was my mother’s favorite flower. She used to give a dozen to me every year on my birthday.”

She scoops a spoonful of sugar into her tea and stares into the bottom of the cup. If Harry didn’t know better, he’d think her intense stare was an attempt to read the leaves. He reaches over to her and grabs onto her fingertips.

“I think Rose is a lovely name,” he says.

She smiles softly, looking up at him from under her lashes. “Thanks,” she says. “I mean, it’s not James Sirius, but—”

“Hey,” Harry laughs. “Those are noble names.”

Hermione laughs — giggles, almost, and for a moment looks so young. Then, she sobers, and her smile becomes quiet again. “Noble indeed,” she whispers, remembering. “Noble indeed.”

Harry remembers too. Harry remembers everything: the smell of the forest, the blankness of death, the taste of blood on the wind. But he pushes it aside. It does not do to dwell in the past and forget to live.

“And what will you tell the lovely Rose about her Uncle Harry,” he asks after a beat, even as the joviality in his voice begins to stick to the roof of his mouth. “This is obviously a very important question.”

Hermione laughs and looks away, half-blushing, he thinks, though he can’t fathom why. “I think,” she says, "I will tell them that their Uncle Harry was once very famous. Once upon a time.”

Harry laughs. He’s still famous, and always will be, but thankfully it is no longer his sole defining characteristic.

“And,” Hermione continues, “I will tell them that their Uncle Harry once saved their mum from a troll and she spend the next seven years saving his arse and not getting nearly enough credit for it.”

He moves to make some witty retort, but she lifts a finger to pause him and her smile shifts to something familiar and soft.

“And I will tell them that the legends could never capture you,” she says. “And that you are the best friend I have ever had or will have. And that I am better having known you and that, Harry Potter —” She takes his hand again, and squeezes lightly. “That will never change.”