Hermione deserved a chance, she deserved happiness, she deserved to be saved – like Paulina had failed to do when there was still time. She should have stolen her away; they should have gone to live in some foreign country where no-one would know them, with Emilia and the baby too. But it was too late to berate herself, and she had work to do.
She had this house at the limits of the city, that belonged to her grandmother and where she never set foot as long as she was married. It was full of books in lost languages and jars of strange contents, and she had always kept it as her inheritance, never thinking she would go back there, never thinking she would need to use any of it. But desperate times call for desperate measures, and she had unearthed the family secrets and started to work.
They had called her a witch before, and all other kinds of names, they simply could not bear that a woman would fend for herself and her kind. She'd never thought she would really become one, however. It was just the insult they threw at her when they were out of her wits.
But then the king turned mad with jealousy, and in his fury killed his children and “beloved” wife, and Paulina's dear husband too, and that thread of hope, that idea that she might, one day, bring them back, was all she had left.
Rumours started about how she kept going to the house at all times of the day and night, some even disrespecting her husband's memory by suggesting she was keeping a lover there now that she was widowed and free to do so. She did not pay them any mind, and a couple rants of her own sufficed to silence them. A woman at court, she had learned to remember details and overheard secrets, and she had more than one trick up her sleeve.
For years she struggled, poring over tomes and grimoires, working on endless spells and learning to master a magic she was not sure she understood entirely.
Her husband was lost for good, on a distant shore. There was always a small chance that he survived, but as the years passed she lost every shred of hope she had left. But Hermione, her Hermione, with whom she had grown up and whom she loved more than Leontes could ever swear he did – maybe she could somehow bring her back. What if her chances were thin? What if they grew thinner every passing year? As long as she could she would try. She owed her that much, for having failed her when she had promised to save her; for having sent her child to certain death. She sometimes wondered if Hermione would not hate her more for bringing her back to life when her children were dead, her little Mamillius and the defenseless new-born baby who'd never grow up to be her mother's joy. But then she remembered the Oracle, and if there was the smallest chance the baby was still alive, she would need a mother, and Hermione's soul deserved to rest on the knowledge that her other child was safe.
Necromancy was the darkest art, every book she read assured her, and the dead seemed to come back monstrous, inhabited with devils. She could not risk it with Hermione. For years she searched for the right rite, the exact potion, the perfect sort that would bring her back in spirit as well as in flesh. By then the body was rotten in the ground, all she had left of her were the memories, and a lock of hair they had exchanged years ago when they learned they would be separated by marriage, and she did not seem to get any closer to a solution, even after she used part of her small fortune to obtain books from all over the known world.
Then, years into the search, as she was rereading some Ovid to find the time, the passage on Pygmalion caught her attention. Maybe it was just a legend the Romans invented, but after all her research she knew not to assume something was impossible just because it seemed so.
Learning to sculpt was the trickiest part, she had always been terrible at “feminine” crafts as a child, even her paintings were terrible. Hermione had been the gifted one. But as she worked on block after block of marble, her hands roughened and became better at the task, until she mastered the task entirely.
Eventually, she ordered the most expensive cream-coloured marble she could find, the stone the exact colour of Hermione's skin. She poured her soul into it, often having to stop for the tears that clouded her vision and prevented her from working. Recalling memories of childhood, of growing together, every moment shared - the candid and the illicit ones; the promises of always staying together even as Hermione was promised to the king of Sicily; the long trip from Russia to this distant land to follow her; her own marriage with Antigonus that made her as happy as it let her be close to Hermione. Raising Mamillius alongside the queen, practically becoming his second mother. The restraint to stay appropriate, for Hermione was too good for Leontes, too good for her, and would never have betrayed him even if it cost her everything. And all for nothing, Paulina reflected bitterly, as he'd accused the most honourable woman alive of the most unbelievable crime, with a man he would sooner spend a night with than she.
This was often when Paulina had to stop, but she forced herself to go on, to remember every second, up to her visit in prison, when she had seen the baby for the first time but had been kept away from Hermione herself. Then came the tribunal, and the pride she had felt for her queen as she stood up to her tyrannical husband, the fear when she beheld her so fragile and sickly, the urge to come forward and hold her in her arms, to protect her, to kill Leontes for her sake. How she had held her as she died, of grief and sickness combined. As she finished sculpting the last details of her face, her lips, the wrinkles at the corner of her eyes that she imagined would have grown there with time, but that made her no less beautiful, she remembered the last words she ever said, words for her ears and her ears only, that she would ever treasure even in grief.
And as she set down the chisel, the memory still vivid in her mind, the statue seemed to shiver and slowly she blinked. Paulina laid her hand above her heart and felt the slow beat liven, saw colour come to her, and soon they embraced, bridging sixteen years and more of separation with this simple touch.
Barely a month passed before news of Perdita's return reached them. It was a month spent catching up and enjoying the company of each other, alone at last, remembering their lost ones and grieving together, and starting to envision a future.
Paulina rarely wondered at the miracle she had managed. It was enough to her that she had her Hermione back, alive and well. She had never loved anyone so much, and that seemed to be all the magic one needed, when you knew how to call upon the right deities. Maybe she was a witch, maybe she was a sinner and a heretic, but she knew deep down that there was nothing wrong with what she had done.
But when Hermione wanted to see her daughter, Paulina knew she would have to let her go. She hoped to be able to get the daughter alone, let her in on the secret and have her visit old aunt Paulina every other day to tell her stories of the old times, when really she would be with her mother.
The statue stratagem was Hermione's idea, a nod to the way Paulina had brought her back, which she found extremely romantic and always found a way to joke about. But of course the whole court had to come along, king and all, and they had to insist on touching her. And when Perdita begged, all Paulina could do was to show them that the statue was in fact living. She found a small consolation in how Leontes clearly repented, and hoped the “miracle” would make him respect the queen enough this time around.
She had seen her married, she had seen her die, and now for the third time Paulina let Hermione go. She needed Perdita, she needed that family. She knew deep down she could never forgive Leontes entirely, but she was too kind a soul to do anything about it. Paulina, however, was not. And she was no longer the scared, helpless young woman of years ago, nor even the incensed but powerless woman who could only yell at him until her throat was parched, to no avail. She had magic at the tip of her fingers, and she swore to the gods that if he ever mistreated Hermione again, or so much as raised his voice against her, she would make him pay.