Hermione Granger loves to read.
For as long as she can remember, books had ruled their home. Her parents read everything, medical journals and magazines, newspapers and letters, books on gardening and cooking, books in more than one language.
She grew up learning English and Spanish in the same breath, and then she went to school where everything was wrong. Being called an immigrant wasn’t an insult, it was half factual, her father was born in Cuba, moved to Spain when he was a kid, and ran to England with a partial scholarship and a dream.
Growing up, they lived in a part of London that was filled with new people. With men and woman from a different part of the world, and Hermione’s parents helped keep their teeth healthy and clean. Hermione grew up in a dentist office, sitting behind the counter and helping to keep track of names, times, and procedures.
She grew up learning words in languages that were not English and later being told she was wrong.
Her first act of magic, was making her teacher speak in only Spanish for a whole day.
Her second, was setting a stack of paper on fire because the whole class had failed a test because they didn’t all write in English.
~`~
Her Hogwarts letter arrives with a woman who doesn’t belong in her world. She is not brown in any way, she is not wide eyed and curious, and she does not understand Javier Granger when he speaks to her. It’s not the first time this has happened, when her parents had taken her to her new school in a part of London she had never been too.
She is a woman that is not to be argued with, not to be fought with, not to be tested. She speaks in clear English, but her eyes are kind and warm as she slows her words for Javier to understand.
Professor McGonagall makes many things clear, that Hogwarts is a school of magic, of witchcraft and wizardry, of English born students. It’s made loud and clear that Hermione has to be up for the challenge, and that she has to be ready to hide part of herself away.
If it takes her away from all the weird white kids who only speak English and make fun of her food, she’ll take it. She’ll live with it for something better.
~`~
Hogwarts is bigger and louder than she imagined. Even though she can’t make friends, even though she’s only allowed to speak in tongues in classes while waving her wand, even though she is told off for knowing answers in some classes and not in others. Hogwarts is a strange home.
It’s a school, it’s a start to something more.
The library is her home when the common room, her dorm room, and even the classrooms are too loud. She can charm the books to read in Spanish, she can write her parents in her second language, she can be the girl she always was, she can be brown in a sea of white.
The library is where all the books, all the stories, all of the secrets to this new and other world are hidden. She belongs to in one just as much as the other, but one thing doesn’t change, and that one thing is her.
Two months into her first year, she makes not one, but two friends. Harry Potter and Ron Weasley, the boy who lived and a young king.
A storybook tale of their own.
~`~
Her summers are spent in the dentist office, doing her homework behind the desk while keeping track of patients and dates and procedures. She writes letters to her two boys, the boy who lived and the young king. They keep her on her toes and she loves them dearly, they matter to her and she loves them.
She loves them.
When she goes back to school, after summers spent behind a desk, listening to men and women and children speak to her in different languages. It always feels weird, she gets used to listening to different languages, and learning, always learning.
But back at Hogwarts, it’s only English, but she has a wider group of friends over the years. Angelina Johnson, whose father is from Jamaica and is also a Muggle, understands some Spanish and understands what it’s like to grow up with someone from the other side of the Atlantic ocean. Lee Jordan is brown like her, along with Angelina, but he doesn’t know any Spanish, but he does know how to dance. Alicia Spinnet is half-Spanish and half-white, but her blonde hair and blue eyes make her pass off as white, but she can speak Spanish and they whisper together some nights when Hermione can’t sleep.
She still writes home in Spanish, telling her parents less and less about Hogwarts and more about the mundane of her time at school. She loves them, but she feels the disconnect, she feels the sadness looming over her.
It starts to get harder to be home during the summers, and it becomes easier to run away. The magical world is a home, but she misses sitting behind the desk and doing her homework around people that speak more than one language.
~`~
She fights with Ron more and more, she likes him, loves him because he was one of her first friends. She finds happiness around him when they bicker, and it makes her forget about her parents, even if his always seem to be looming around them, or Harry.
She and Ron fight, because that’s what they always do. Harry and her sit together in companionable silence because they don’t have siblings and that’s what they always do. She loves them both, but it’s different, they are different boys, young men, and she loves them differently.
Hermione doesn’t even know why she would love him, he’s everything that she isn’t and more, but Ron is Ron. He isn’t Viktor Krum, older and all muscles and Quidditch training, he isn’t McLaggen, older and pompous and annoying. No, Ron is her best friend, he is smart and funny and clever, he makes her laugh and on nights when she’s worried and can’t sleep and Alicia is gone, they dance together.
Her mum had taught her how dance and her father was her favorite partner, but Ron takes that spot quickly.
He has a surprising grace to him, years from helping his mum in the kitchen.
He hums under his breath, and it’s the only noise between them for months when she’s seventeen and he’s sixteen almost seventeen. Lavender Brown and her blonde curls and purple eyes don’t matter to her, in fact they don’t matter to each other at all, and Hermione knows that she’s in love.
She’s in love and she’s tired of hiding it, but they don’t have the time.
~`~
She brings a library on the run because it’s easy, it’s familiar, and she ends up reading children’s stories. She had charmed some of her favorite titles to look important, not that the boys will read them anyways, not that they can red Spanish anyways.
She loves them, but even now she feels the disconnect, which only grows worst with Ron leaving. She and Harry are found siblings, they love one another so protectively that it all makes sense. But they aren’t in love like she and Ron are.
Hermione reads, she reads the same book over and over and over again, unable to help herself because she misses Ron and Harry does too. But they miss him in different ways.
Hermione hates being sad, but she’s been sad for a long time anyways.
Harry keeps her sane, even if its just sitting beside her and reading his own book while Hermione reads her own. She’s rereading her children’s book and Harry is reading about Dumbledore, or at least turning the pages.
They are a lost pair of siblings, waiting and wanting their young king to come back to them. They are waiting for the sword to be pulled from the stone, but it’s not happening, and time passes until…until he finally comes back with the sword of Gryffindor in his hands and the Slytherin locket destroyed.
She’s tempted to send a flock of birds after him, but she can’t make herself do it. She both hates him and loves him, she wants him to be dead and she’s also thankful he isn’t.
They dance together on the first warm day of the year, with Harry sleeping feet from them. Her head is on his shoulder and his hands are warm, and Hermione wants to tell him sorry, she wants to tell him that she loves him, and yet…and yet the words are stuck in her throat every time she looks up at him.
So they dance quietly, Ron humming under his breath and Hermione trying not to cry and failing. He lets her be comfortable, he lets her feel sad, and he doesn’t say anything as she whispers to him in Spanish.
It’s okay that he doesn’t understand, she doesn’t care, because she knows that he loves her, there’s no denying any of it now.
~`~
Hermione wakes up after the war and can’t believe that it’s all over.
Her arm hurts, the word carved into her skin like a badge of honor, even though it was meant to humiliate her. She’s eighteen and burying friends, watching them be lowered into the ground.
Hermione wakes up after the war and runs away to Australia with Ron.
They disagree, then bicker, then fight, then scream. Hermione misses him, she misses Ron as she knew him, but she loves him now just as she did then. She loves him, but the summer is long and going home isn’t any easier.
Hermione wakes up after the war and goes back to Hogwarts by herself, without Ron, without Harry, a first in her life.
She writes home, in English because she’s out of practice in Spanish. She writes Ron and Harry, but only Harry answers. Ginny gets answers from Ron, Fleur is having a baby, Charlie went back to Romania, Percy reopened the joke shop, and George still won’t leave his room. They’re all struggling, but the war is over and everything should go back to normal.
Should being the appropriate word.
Hermione wakes up after the war and follows behind Neville Longbottom because Hogwarts listens to him. She wakes up behind her wards and cries to herself because she misses Ron and Harry, because she’s alone and sad. She whispers lullabies to herself in Spanish and tries not to cry in her classes while practicing her dueling stances.
She wakes up some mornings gasping for air with her arm aching and Ginny climbs into her bed and holds her. She cries and misses her morning classes and Professor McGonagall pulls her into her office and tells her that she doesn’t need her NEWTs.
Ron writes her on the anniversary of the end of the war, he has a niece, her name is Victoire Molly Weasley.
She writes back in Spanish, not caring if he can read her words or not.
She sits her NEWTs, graduates from school, and kisses him when he hugs her.
Te quiero is the first thing she tells him, I love you.
~`~
Hermione takes to the Ministry quickly, easily, fighting for what she believes in and what is right for the world. She writes laws for the protection of all magic creatures, protection for werewolves both in their human and wolf form, protection for people like her, Muggleborns. She’s happy as she works through stacks of paperwork and argues in front of the Wizengamot, feeling a rush for every case she wins and heartbroken over every case lost.
She wins more than she loses, but it’s still upsetting no matter how she looks at it.
Ron and Harry are off playing Aurors, but Hermione knows that they’ll come back to the little flat they share together. Ron especially always makes sure to come back to her.
Together they worry about Harry, because it’s what they had done since they were eleven. They also worry about Ginny and how she tries to sneak around their flat. They are the first to know when they become engaged, and Hermione is happy for them, but she wishes for the same for herself.
She and Ron spend nights together in their room, talking and dancing and with her reading a loud anything in her hands. She reads her favorite childhood books in both English and Spanish, and she can’t help but notice that Ron seems to understand more and more of her other tongue.
It’s comforting, just as it is to hear her papa call her Mija. It’s comforting, just as it is for her mama to make her her favorite meal. It’s comforting, just as it is for Ron to whisper that he loves her before they finally fall asleep at night.
Hermione takes to adulthood, to her career, to love, easily. She spends her days fighting for those who need protection, and her nights with the man she loves most in the world. All of the time in between is for her family, the one she was born into, and the one she found starting at the age of eleven.
~`~
Harry and Ginny are the first to get engaged, but George and Angelina are the first to lose a child and get married after the war.
George is himself again, or as much as any of them can hope. He smiles and laughs, he plays with Teddy and Victoire, he kisses Angelina in the corner of any room, not caring who’s watching them. He adores Angelina, and it brings out a beauty in Angelina that Hermione hadn’t known anyone could have.
They’re sad and grieving for their daughter that never breathed, but no one would know the loss they had if they met them on their wedding day. George looks tall and handsome, and Angelina is a vision in white, they can’t keep their eyes off of each other, so happy, so in love.
¿Te casarías conmigo? Ron asks her, will you marry me?
She knew that he was slowly starting to understand her when she read to him, words that she grew up with, words that she could switch around in a moment’s notice.
Hermione would’ve married Ron at fourteen, when he was all limbs and awkward smiles and insecure about everything. She would’ve married him at fifteen, still awkward and too tall and pale as the world grew darker. She would’ve married him at sixteen, stupid and annoying and not speaking to her.
She would’ve married him at seventeen, out on the run and scared of a world that hated her for being a part of it.
She gave him her heart years ago, at twelve when he gave himself up for her and Harry to move forward. Sacrificing himself on a giant chessboard for her and Harry to move onto the next challenge.
She loves him, all six something feet of him with his ginger hair and blue eyes and heartbreaking smile. He is beautiful, he’s smart and funny and clever, and Hermione loves him. She feels an honor in him allowing her to be his bride, and she knows that he feels honored that she said yes.
Si, te quiero.
~`~
They get married less than a year later.
Hermione doesn’t understand how Harry and Ginny can be engaged for so long, she knows that Ginny doesn’t want to be a ‘child bride’, but Hermione just can’t wait. She can’t wait for the time to pass just to be at a better age. She wants to be married, she wants Ron.
And so she does, eight months after he asks her to marry him, she does.
They argue over who will be the Best Man and Maid of Honor. Hermione wants Harry and Ron wants Ginny, but they both also want the other. They flip a coin, Ron gets Harry, Hermione gets Ginny, and they give a toast together.
Ron gives her vows in Spanish and Hermione in English, they had two ceremonies. Her Abeula Roslyn came all the way from Spain, she doesn’t know of magic, but she’s always given Hermione all the love she could ever want. She has always sent her care packages and love in every written word, and Hermione’s favorite books always came from her.
Harry and Ginny move out of their flat, and so it’s just her and Ron. They feel carefree, Ron is happy in his work and so is Hermione, they get to watch Percy and Audrey fall in love, they get fought over for Harry and Ginny’s wedding. Hermione is Maid of Honor and Ron is Best Man, and they give a toast together.
~`~
Hermione cries the first time she holds her godson, Ron already has godchildren, and he had been in the room when Victoire was born. James Sirius Potter is her first nephew, on her side of the family as Harry had been her brother since they we’re eleven. She cries as she holds him because he’s so small and beautiful and she wants a baby.
She wants to have a baby with Ron, she wants to have someone so small and beautiful to look after. She wants to have a little boy with red curls and blue eyes, a little girl with freckles and a regal smile, a little prince and princess, born from a king.
She goes back to bed when they get back home, unable to stop the tears. She loves what she has now, and she knows Ron does too, but she’s scared to break the mold. She wants so much and in so little time, but she can’t help herself for wanting it.
They get a late call, just a little bit after they finally fall asleep, and Frederick “Freddie” Gideon Weasley and Roxanne Maxine Weasley, are welcomed into the family too. George and Angelina are beside themselves, so happy and cheerful, a son and a daughter, a new nephew and niece.
Hermione cries when she holds them too, but she’s not sure if it’s from her earlier hysterics or from how happy she is for George and Angelina.
They were her first older siblings, George and once ago Fred, had taken her in and teased her and treated her like a little sister, like they did Ginny. And Angelina, she had braided back Hermione’s hair at thirteen and reminded her to stand tall and even how to throw a punch a year later. Hermione had been so happy to have them, to always be young and small with them close by.
~`~
She tells Harry first.
It’s easier, and he had walked in on her as she stared down at the positive tests in her bathroom sink. She has no idea how far along she is, only that she’s expecting, and will hopefully carry this baby to term.
Angelina, Audrey, and Fleur all lost a baby already. Ginny had James, Fleur had Victoire, and Angelina now had Freddie and Roxanne. Audrey had no baby but she had Percy and they wanted to wait, to have time.
Hermione wanted this baby more than anything else in the world.
~`~
Roslyn Nymphadora Weasley was born at six in the afternoon on February 23, 2005. Hermione had screamed and cried as she came into the world, Ron cried as he held her for the first time, and Harry cried when Hermione called him godfather, even though it had been decided months before.
Rosie was beautiful and small and delicate, with dark hair that would turn red by her first birthday and little freckles already on her nose and cheeks. She was named Rose because they wanted something beautiful, and because it was the first name Ron said when they found out they were having a little girl.
She cries through the night, she sleeps best in Ron’s arms, but Hermione gets her first laugh followed by her first smile, and she gets called ‘mama’ before Ron gets called ‘dada’. Hermione gets to see Rose’s first steps, she gets to see her first little dance, and she gets to love her daughter like something she never imagined before.
She adores her Rosie Girl, her little red curls and chubby cheeks, her sweet little smile and the dimples that match Ron’s, she’s small and beautiful and Hermione can’t imagine loving anyone more than her daughter.
And then the year passes.
And then she’s pregnant again.
~`~
It’s not the same, it’s not different, it’s not what she expected and it also is. This time it just all feels strange. She doesn’t keep Harry at her side like she had last time, and Ron is busy with Rose, which is fine and she’s happy about it.
But….
But it’s all strange and she doesn’t feel right or normal.
They find out they’re having a boy, Hugo, Ron calls him when they find out, Hugo Charles after his favorite older brother. Hermione loves it immediately, Charlie is a great correspondence, and he adores their Rosie Girl, but Hermione feels off.
She breaks down in the middle of a meeting with the Minister of Magic, Kingsley Shacklebolt, and goes on her leave early. Three months early, and she doesn’t return until Hugo is nearly six months old.
Hugo Charles Weasley is born on an unseasonably warm day, October 10, 2006. He comes into the world crying, but he quiets in her arms, something that won’t ever change. She loves him like breathing.
Hermione is an only child, to two loving and doting parents, she doesn’t know what it’s like to be an older or younger sibling, not like Ron. She doesn’t know how to be a mother to a little boy, because she never really knew any little boys before, other than her godson James, other than her nephews Freddie and Albus, and other than little Teddy Lupin, but she had been away at Hogwarts most of his first year.
She struggles being a mother to her daughter and especially her son, her son who looks more like her with his wide nose and brown eyes and tan skin. It’s easy to call him Mijo, she adores him so much, but he’s so otherworldly, so different than little Rose, than her Mija.
Hugo’s small and beautiful and delicate, the exact same as Rose had been at the same age, but Hermione just feels sad and disconnected from her small little family. Ron tries to keep her happy, but Hermione feels so low, unable to keep her spirits up and the memories out of her head.
Her arm burns, she feels separated from her children, and she can hear a mad woman’s laugh in the background of every hard fought dream.
~`~
Rose Zeller is a few years younger than her, but she already has two young children, a son and a daughter, and is married to Ernie MacMillan, Hermione’s healer while she was expecting Rose and Hugo. Healer Rose Zeller has her make lists of names, of places, and of things, then she had Hermione assign a feeling, an emotion to them.
Slowly, Hermione feels herself come back, she feels the sadness leave her, and she feels safe and whole again. She can sleep at night without fear, or worry, or anxiety.
Hugo is a perfect little boy, and at six months old, he still needs her, but Hermione finally feels okay to leave his side. She has PTSD and post-partum depression, she’ll go through fits the rest of her life, but making her lists, assigning her emotions, it helps.
It helps.
~`~
Ron left the Ministry when Rose was born, going down to part time when Hermione couldn’t force herself too. He comes back to full time when Hugo starts preschool. Hugo had been colicky and ravenous, he had been loud and clumsy and sweet, he had also put off the idea of them having another baby.
Hermione’s depression had also done the trick too.
She’s sad about it, she hadn’t hated being pregnant, even if it caused so much uncertainty and change, but Hugo and Rose are enough right now. She loves them so much, more than Ron or Harry or her parents, more than anyone else in the world, her children are all that matter.
They take turns with their children, somedays Hermione takes Rose with her to court and somedays she lets Hugo hide under her desk and listen. Somedays Ron takes Hugo out on stakeouts, and somedays he lets Rose hide under the desk in Harry’s cubicle. They keep their children close, Rose and Hugo are smart and funny and beautiful, they make their jobs and the long hours their forced into worth it.
And then they blink.
~`~
Rose has a small group of friends that she adores, she’s a mother hen at six and she keeps Becca Havings and her cousin Al Potter close to her. She loves to cook and bake with her grandmothers, and listens to every word that her grandfathers’ tell her. She loves her brother and cousins, she loves her parents, and Hermione loves her so much that it hurts.
Hugo can’t sit still.
He has ADHD, he can’t sit still and he can’t focus or he focuses too hard. He plays football on her father’s request and it helps, Hugo loves to run.
Rose reads everything she can, she loves to sit in Ron’s lap and read a loud to him, or listen to whatever Hermione can read a loud to her.
Hugo can’t read.
He has dyslexia, letters play tricks on him and it scares Hermione.
Her son won’t survive school, he can’t read, he can’t sit still, he can’t focus. There’s so much that he can’t do, and she doesn’t understand how he’ll thrive, learn at all.
She scared, and she doesn’t know how Ron is so calm through every meeting with Hugo’s teachers and doctors. She doesn’t understand how he can nod and agree and promise to work with Hugo on the new therapies.
Yo tampoco puedo leer, Ron tells her when she finally questions him late one night, Rose and Hugo failing to eavesdrop from the other side of the door. I can’t read either.
And suddenly it makes sense, why schoolwork and essays were such a chore to Ron while they were in school, why his paperwork is always full of spelling errors, why even the notes he writes to her are hardly legible. It makes sense that one of their children got this from Ron, one of their children got Hermione’s worrying.
She lets Ron teach their son how to read, and watches her husband learn how to read too.
~`~
They blink again, and Rose is fifteen and in love.
Scorpius Malfoy is not the boy Hermione wants her daughter to love, her baby girl, her little Rosie Girl, but she accepts it because her daughter is finally happy. She missed seeing her daughter happy and carefree, something that puberty took away from her.
Rosie is a vision, she always was, but maturity and love wears her well, and Hermione is proud of her and hopes the same for Hugo. She wants them to find a love so full and overwhelming, the same as she has for Ron, as she always had for him.
She loves her daughter, and her son, and she wants their happiness.
Rose deserves it, and so does Hugo.
~`~
Hugo is tall and board shouldered, the same as Ron at seventeen, and he’s happier with Lyla Zabini than Hermione had seen in years. She doesn’t know what it is with her children, how love changes them so completely, and yet not at all. Love brings out more in them, more light, more happiness, more of their personality.
Lyla is small and shaking and scared, but she has a fire inside of her that reminds Hermione of herself. She can see the difference between both Hugo and Lyla when they’re together and when they aren’t.
She doesn’t want to see them apart anymore.
~`~
Hermione tucked her face into Ron’s chest and closed her eyes.
They danced better without music, but there was something nice with having it flow around the room. They had started dancing back when they were kids, stupid and ridiculous kids too stubborn to admit their feelings. Ron had been insecure and Hermione had been scared, and yet some things hadn’t changed.
“It’s too quiet,” mumbled Hermione, a few minutes after the record stopped. She didn’t want to leave Ron’s arms though to turn it over, she honestly could’ve lived the rest of her life right here in this moment.
“They’ll come back,” whispered Ron, and Hermione felt tears prickle in her eyes. Hugo had just left for his seventh and last year of school, Head Boy just as Rose had been Head Girl. She was so proud of both of her children, but this last summer had been hard on Hugo, with just as many ups as there were downs.
Hermione stopped swaying and looked up at her husband, he was no longer the young eleven year old boy she had met on the train years ago. Instead she was looking up at a man who had married her at twenty-one, had children with her at twenty-three and twenty-five, and who had faced every big challenge with her since the moment they had met. Ron had aged, just as she had, but she was still as in love with him now as she was then.
“It won’t be the same,” Hermione told him, and it wouldn’t be. Rose was sure to come over at any moment to tell them that she was getting married, and Hermione wouldn’t be surprised if Hugo told her that he was going to be a father sooner than later.
“You always wanted a big family Hermione.”
She did, she wanted at least four children, ever since she was little she wanted a big family, bigger than her own that is. And now she had Rose and Hugo, and with them she had Scorpius and Lyla, cousins as close as siblings themselves, who adored her children.
Scorpius picked Rose up when she was at her lowest and made her feel warm and bright and happy. He gave her confidence and love and strength when Hermione hadn’t been there for her, and Hermione would never be able to forget the moment she walked into her parent’s kitchen and saw her daughter kissing him at her father’s wake.
Lyla, in turn, had a long list of reasons for Hermione to be unsure about. Everything from her parents to her personality, but behind all the careful shields and anxiety, was a beautiful young girl with a solid head on her shoulders. She loved Hugo with all of her heart, she saw him as he was, what he truly was, smart and funny and protective, kind and sweet and wholesome.
Neither of them were the people that Hermione ever imagined her children falling in love with. Scorpius was a Malfoy, Lyla a Zabini, both Slytherins, both with parents that hated her during the war and even before because of her own parentage.
But Scorpius looked at Rose with complete devotion in his eyes, the same way Hermione looked at Ron. And Lyla held Hugo’s hand whenever he couldn’t stay still, making him focus and breathe, just as Ron did for her.
She couldn’t deny her love for either of them, Scorpius had been slow, he carefully wormed his way into her heart. While Lyla’s came all at once, watching her shake and shiver in the kitchen only feet from them, her bright blue eyes intense just as Ron’s had been the first time he told Hermione he loved her.
They had four children now.
“Why don’t we read something?” asked Ron, slowly pulling her over to the couch, the same one that they had spent thousands of moments together on with Rose and Hugo. It was where Hermione had told Ron that she was pregnant with Hugo, where Ron had sat with Rose and Hugo through dragon pox and chicken pox, where the four of them had ate Chinese food and watched movies and read books to each other.
Hermione missed reading, she missed reading for fun, she missed reading a loud to her children.
But she had Ron, still she had him, and that was enough.
“Te quiero,” whispered Hermione as Ron finally sat down beside her, a worn copy of Sense and Sensibility in his hands, one of her favorites. “Siempre.”
I love you, always.