The You I Never Knew, Part 9/?

[museme87]

The You I Never Knew

Author: MuseMe87

Fandom: Harry Potter

Pairing: Ron/Hermione

Beta: PigWithHair

Rating: G

Word Count: 2,730

Disclaimer: All characters and canon situations are property of J.K. Rowling. No copyright infringement is intended.

Notes: Originally written prior to Deathly Hallows and is considered AU.
Summary: Adele Granger never knew about the Wizarding world until the day she receives her admissions letter to Hogwarts. Now her mother, Hermione, must return to the world she left eleven years prior, and Adele will begin to search for the answer to her biggest question: who is her father?

++++++++++


Harry glanced at the clock on the wall of his office and sighed. It had been his intention to search for Adele as soon as class let out, but then he’d found himself in his office, still panicked about what he was going to say to his niece. And taking his own advice that he gave to Hermione, he thought that having something prepared would be far better than just winging it and muddling everything up in the process.

If it had been Bill’s little girl or any of his nephews that had been that upset, he would of whisked them off for some ice cream with as many toppings as they wanted. But ice cream wasn’t going to fix Adele’s problems. And, Harry began to wonder, if anything would. Not having a father because he was dead was one thing, but to not have a father because he’d “abandoned” her, which was what happened as far as Adele was concerned, was quite another. She wouldn’t come out of this unscathed.

“Professor?”

Harry looked up to find Akemi, Gawain, and Kip in the doorway with nervous expressions on their faces. “Miss Kano, Mr. Wood, Mr. Lewis.” He was afraid to continue further, as if he already knew why they were here.

“Sorry to bother you, sir,” Gawain began, “It’s just that, well, Adele hasn’t been back to the common room since this morning, and she wasn’t at dinner either.”

“We were worried, so I went up to our bedroom and found this on her bed,” Akemi explained, handing Harry the slip of parchment.

I’m going home.

~Adele

Harry felt the color drain from his face. He could understand her needing time to herself but to quit Hogwarts altogether? Perhaps she didn’t want to have to face him everyday, but it wasn’t as if he was her father. Of course, he reminded himself, she didn’t know that. Harry damned himself for telling Hermione to wait until tomorrow to speak to Ron.

But he had. And things were the way that they were whether he, Hermione, Ron, or Adele liked it. They all needed to stop hanging onto the past and start picking up the pieces of their lives. For Ron and Hermione, that would start tomorrow, and for Adele a few days after that. But until then, he’d have to do damage control. He had never been one for words or thinking things through; he was an action kind of guy. And right now, that was exactly the kind of guy Adele needed, Harry Potter the Auror rather than Harry Potter the professor.

Jumping to his feet, Harry glanced out the window into the darkness, as if to assess the situation and then took a quill and piece of parchment to write a brief note.

“Take this to Professor Longbottom,” he commanded. “I’m going to need help if we ever hope to find her before she gets into serious trouble.”

“Professor?” Akemi asked, not moving an inch despite orders otherwise. “She’s going to be alright, right?”

Harry really didn’t know. It’d been a few hours since she’d left presumably, and he didn’t have any idea where she would have gone. She knew that the train station was near Hogsmeade but definitely wouldn’t know the way there. She’d likely have got lost, and, if his worse fears were true, would have ended up in the Forbidden Forest.

“We’re going to find her, okay?” he said, placing a hand on her shoulder.

++++++++++

It was the sound of a loud crack that caused Adele to turn around too quickly and trip over a large, gnarled tree root, which sent her crashing down. Her knees throbbed and arms burned, but that wasn’t what made her start crying.

She just wanted to go home and snuggle up with her mum, forgetting everything about the Wizarding world and her father along with it. She missed Pamela and talking with her about how cute her next door neighbor was. She missed all her other friends at school and her bedroom at home. Homesickness hadn’t really been an issue before, especially when she was excited to find her father, but now, alone in the dark and lost, she was beginning to hate how unfamiliar this world was to her.

Adele picked herself up and brushed off as much dirt as possible, minding the scraps and scratches on her knees. Glancing around, she realized that not only did she not know the direction of Hogsmeade, but also that she didn’t know the direction she came from. Everything was too dark. She reached for her wand in her coat pocket, but it wasn’t there or anywhere else. It must have slipped out along the way. While Adele was afraid before, now she was absolutely petrified.

Heading back the way she thought she had come, Adele began to search the ground carefully in the low light for any sign of her wand. She may have not known many spells, but it sure made her feel safe just to have it.

Adele turned a sharp corner, which she thought was familiar, and ran straight into something sticky. She tried to bring her hands up to her face to get whatever it was off but didn’t have much luck. Her arms were extremely sticky as well and difficult to move. Adele couldn’t help but think that she was caught in some sort of webbing, maybe like a spider’s. But that would mean that this spider would have to be about a million times bigger than any spider she’d ever seen, a particularly unsettling thought.

While Adele struggled to get out of the webbing, she heard a strange sound coming from above her. She wanted to close her eyes tightly, thinking that maybe if she didn’t see what was about to eat her it would hurt less. Unfortunately, her eyes moved anyway. A million times bigger? Adele gulped as she looked at the creature. Try a billion.

++++++++++

Hermione stared blankly at the dirty plate in the sink, as if she couldn’t recall how to clean a dish anymore. Her stomach had been flip-flopping all night from nervousness. She had come over to her parents’ house in hopes of keeping her mind off of the letter she’d sent Ron just a couple hours ago to arrange a time and place to meet the following day.

However, her master plan hadn’t worked, and, judging from the looks she’d got all through dinner, her parents had suspected that something was wrong as well. So when her mother came into the kitchen and began to idly tidy up, Hermione knew that her mother was just waiting for her to speak up about what was wrong. She didn’t want to talk about it though and knew that it would only be a matter of time before her mum would confront her about it.

It was some silent minutes later when Hermione put the last plate in the cabinet that her mother cleared her throat. “Hermione, dear, I couldn’t help but notice that you seemed a little preoccupied at dinner.” Gentle prodding, which was just like her mother.

“I’m just lonely without Adele around.”

“Oh, I understand that quite well. I must have moped for weeks after you left for Hogwarts your first year.” She chuckled to herself. “I’m pretty sure your father was convinced I was permanently broken after that. Bless his heart, he tried to understand, but fathers and mothers don’t worry and long for their children in the same way.”

“Yeah.” It was all she could muster.

“Dear, maybe with Adele out of the house now, you might consider finding another sort of companion?”

It was her mother’s way of suggesting, again ever so gently, that it was high time she found herself a boyfriend. She’d worried over that for years, insisting every so often that her granddaughter needed a father figure in her life. And Hermione had tried to see people, but it was hard when there was a child in the picture. Men would be interested in her up to the point where they found out she was a mother. Guys her age just didn’t want that kind of baggage, which she understood. And as Adele grew older, she’d given it another try, this time with some men a few years older than her. They’d been nice, one or two almost perfect, but Hermione hadn’t felt the spark.

Ron was the only man that she’d felt that with. She had ignited something inside of her all those years ago that burned to that very day. Sometimes it was just a flicker, but other times it was a complete conflagration. She had wanted him for so long and continued to, not just for Adele’s sake, but for her own. He had the ability to make her heart flutter one moment and send her into a fury the next, but still, good or bad, he could make her feel intense, passionate emotion that no one else ever could. Nor did she want anyone but Ron to make her feel that way.

So the thought that she was going to meet with him the next evening terrified her. She brought her hand to her mouth to hide her quivering lips from her mother. The meeting place she’d chosen had special meaning for the two of them. It was a tiny café around the flat she was living in years ago. He had taken her there not long after the second war, when things had finally settled down and they were still reeling from their first kiss. They hadn’t really addressed the topic of a relationship until that night in the café. She knew he had wanted to say something all evening, and when he’d finally told her that they needed to address the kiss, he paused and then blurted out:

“I love you.”

Hermione began to cry, and as if her mother saw it coming all along, she wrapped her arms around her and made soft shushing noises like she so often had when Hermione was a child. Hermione held onto her tightly and cried onto her shoulder.

“There, there,” her mother cooed. “This is about Ronald, isn’t it?”

Hermione nodded into her shoulder. It wasn’t that her mother guessed out of nowhere; it was that she always cried about Ron. She had started coming to her mother and letting all her emotions out after the first failed attempt at telling Ron about the pregnancy. She’d cried to her mother when she’d left the Wizarding world and all throughout her pregnancy. And then the day Adele was born. And every one of Adele’s “firsts” and birthdays. It got to the point where her mother just knew.

“I know you miss him, dear. It’s only natural to.” She brushed Hermione’s hair behind her ears and tried to muster a smile of encouragement.

“I love him.”

“I know you do.”

“I don’t want him to hate me,” she said before letting out a great sob.

She heard another set of footsteps in the kitchen, her father’s, but after a brief pause, she heard him leave. No doubt her mother gave him one of those looks to say that this was girl talk and that everything would be as right as rain in a little while not to worry.

“I sent him an owl tonight.” She felt her mother tense briefly, as if surprised. “I’m going to see him tomorrow at that little café.”

“The one where you intended to tell him about Adele in the very beginning.”

Hermione assumed then that her mother understood her intentions for tomorrow evening. She tried her best to collect herself, pulling away from her mother and wiping her eyes dry as best she could.

“I can’t keep this a secret any longer. I never wanted to keep it this long to begin with. I just…”

“I know.”

“And the thought of seeing him again? I’m so terrified.”

She’d dreamed a lot about seeing Ron again, especially recently. He’d always been there waiting, whether it was at her flat or his or even some public place, and the moment she walked up to him, he took her in his arms and held her tightly. He would beg her to never leave him like that ever again, that he loved her and could never move on. She’d stand there listening to him, taking in the smell of his hair that she loved so much and the warmth of his touch. She’d be melting into him, and he’d pull back just enough to kiss her full on the lips. Hermione knew it wouldn’t be like that tomorrow, not with Ron’s temper, but for one more night she could wish.

++++++++++

Ron lazily turned on the shower and ran his fingers through his hair while waiting for the water to adjust to the proper temperature. Perhaps his mother was right about that hair cut; he was getting rather shaggy.

He stepped into the shower, the hot water doing wonders for relaxing his muscles. He’d finished up a bit of necessary paper work when he got home, as planned, but sitting so long made him itch to do something active. He’d taken a quick jog around the neighborhood, exerting himself purposefully to keep his mind on the aching of his legs and far from a certain woman from his past.

But now his mind was idle again and off it began to stray to one Ms. Hermione Granger. He wondered what she looked like now. Beautiful. She was always beautiful. But she’d probably lost all that girlish beauty when she became a woman. Curvy. He thought he’d like that, especially considering the visuals his mind was lending, but that kind of thinking would lead no where good. He hoped that the Muggle world didn’t have any cure for unruly, bushy hair because he liked that about her, despite the teasing she’d got from the other girls around their age back at Hogwarts.

It was easy to forget, when he was caught up in the moment, about all the bad stuff that happened. The up and leaving without a word, and the letter that came not long after that explaining nothing about why she left and just that she didn’t want them to go looking for her. After a little time passed and everyone had begun telling him that it was ‘her choice,’ he couldn’t help but think that it was his fault they weren’t together, despite what everyone else said. He could have done something, most certainly should have done something, but he didn’t. He was so broken hearted that he barely could remember to eat let alone strategize on how to get her back. That was just the first step in a lengthy list of all the things he’d done wrong to get him to where he was at that moment, namely living a life without Hermione and the little family he so often dreamed of having with her.

Ron turned the shower off, stepped out and dried off, and then secured a towel around his waist. He walked into the kitchen for a drink when he saw a letter on the coffee table that he must have missed earlier.

“Accio letter,” he said, after picking up his wand from the kitchen counter.

The letter flew into his hand, and he turned it over, his stomach flipping violently as he saw the writing. He would know it anywhere; after all, he’d spent much of his time at Hogworts looking at it, whether for copying notes or homework.

A letter from Hermione? He almost feared opening it. Who knew what she was going to say in it. Maybe ‘just because I’m back doesn’t mean I want you to contact me,’ but then again, ‘Ron, I made such a stupid decision all those years ago.’ And more importantly, how did he feel about either of those. If she didn’t want to see him then all the better for his relationship with Marcy. In fact, he could just move things right along with her without feeling an ounce of guilt. But if she did realize that she made a mistake, maybe all these years of waiting just proved that they were meant to be together after all.

He ripped open the envelope, and his heart nearly stopped beating.

Dearest Ron…

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Epilogue