Apple Crumble, Apple Tart (Ron/Hermione, 12+)
OK, so. I have written an 8-chapter Ron/Hermione fic. I have been writing it on and off since 2007 (pre-DH!) and recently I pulled the whole thing together and finished it. It was the most fun writing I have had in a long time. Originally it started off as a one-shot, but the story just kept writing and writing itself.
It is completely written. I am currently going through and putting finishing touches to it, and am posting the chapters as I go (probably every few days). So it will definitely not be abandoned unfinished.
Feedback is always always appreciated. I really hope you enjoy it :)
Apple Crumble, Apple Tart (Ron/Hermione, 12+)
Author: akissinacrisis
I: The Cottage Up North
Six weeks after the end of the war, Hermione vanished without a trace. Eighteen years later, Ron goes looking for her and finds a little more than he’s bargained for: his child. What follows is the rapid unravelling of a long-kept secret over the course of a few hot days in August. Love, betrayal, Weasley family melodrama. Ron/Hermione. 12+. 8 chapters. EWE for Ron and Hermione.
Index || Part I || Part II || Part III || Part IV || Part V || Part VI || Part VII || Part VIII
Story notes: All book canon taken into account except for Ron and Hermione’s happily-ever-after as shown in the Deathly Hallows epilogue: in this story, Ron and Hermione did not stay together and get married after the war, and their children, Rose and Hugo, do not exist.
Personal notes: Big thank you to excitedrainbow for proof-reading and cheerleading ♥
APPLE CRUMBLE, APPLE TART
I
The Cottage Up North
The bus grinds to a violent halt and the doors fly open. ‘Here you are!’ shouts the bus driver. ‘Oi - you there! Ginger!’
‘What? Oh - right -’ says Ron with a start. Standing up, he hesitates for a second - do you tip Muggle bus drivers if you ask them to tell you which stop is yours? - but then he notices the glares from the other passengers at his indecision and he hops off as fast as he can.
Abandoned on the country road next to a lonely, rustic brick bus stop on the outskirts of a village called Ambleside, Ron watches the bus hurtle off over the hill and out of sight. He realises that in his dilemma over stupid Muggle customs he forgot to thank the driver.
Still, he’s on the right road. Supposedly. He is on a hillside: to the east, his right, is a high bank of long grass, covered with dark trees, trees that are thicker and darker than the ones that grow where he grew up in Devon. Further on ahead, there are a couple of precariously-balanced stone cottages, cut into the hill. To the west, his left, the hillside slopes down into the valley, where the almost too-picturesque village of Ambleside huddles around the tip of Lake Windermere.
His hands feel clammy: he wipes them on his corduroy trousers absently. He’s out of practice at this. He hasn’t gone on one of these little trips in three years, as George was kind enough to remind him this morning. George had let it be known that he was disappointed: disappointed that Ron was setting himself up for a fall again, when George had thought the trip three years ago was to be the very last one; disappointed that Ron was even doing this to himself - living in the past like this isn’t healthy, as, take it from George, George well knows; disappointed that Ron was listening to the gossip of the cousin of Andrew Bailey who runs the apothecary. Reliable though ‘You know, the French Ministry is full of Englishmen; when I was doing my research I saw all sorts of English names on the documents, Joneses and Grangers and Hopkirks and all sorts’ sounds, Ron - at which point Ron clapped George on the shoulder and told him he’d be back in an hour.
So here he is, having Apparated to the centre of the larger town of Windermere, where he’s been before, and having somehow managed to work the Muggle bus system - cautious, yes, but somehow it had felt necessary. Simple mistakes are easy to make on trips like this.
He pulls the scrap of parchment from his pocket. 4 Cranny Lane, Ambleside.
He glances up at the sign on the bus stop. Cranny Lane. This is it.
Stuffing the scrap of parchment back into his trouser pocket, he starts off down the road towards the nearest cottage. Despite George’s misgivings, Ron feels optimistic about today. He’s hoping that maybe the owners bought the house from a Granger (a female Granger, if he’s really lucky), or that maybe the previous owners did and the current ones have some knowledge of the house’s history. He shouldn’t get his hopes up too much, because old Andrew Bailey’s cousin never saw anyone at the French Ministry of Magic, just the name ‘Granger’ on a document - a five-year-old document. But the fact that when Bailey’s cousin asked around he was actually given an address for the Granger who signed the document is a good sign. Well, it’s good enough for Ron, who’s been looking for her for so long that he takes pretty much anything as a good sign.
The nearest cottage is number two: there is a large wooden ‘2’ on the gate. He keeps walking.
Today, he has high hopes: he’s hopeful that his policy of having given up the active search in favour of waiting for the evidence to come to him is finally going to pay off. The last time he went off on one of these investigations - sodding Romania it had led him to - was three years ago, and then he swore he’d never do it again. Well, not until someone came to him with information. Which, last week, someone had. And it was much more likely that Hermione had once lived in Ambleside than in Romania.
Well. That might not be true. She didn’t leave him any clues - there wasn’t even a note left, the day she vanished.
With a start, he realises that he’s reached the place he’s looking for. Number four. This is it.
He pushes at the wooden gate on which the old and cracked white paint is peeling off; it swings open noiselessly. Golden August sunlight illuminates the small front garden: withering roses sway as if breathed upon by the humid air, and a short tree, loaded with fat yellow crabapples, hangs over the path winding up to the small front door.
And after all that, the journey to Ambleside and the fuss with George and Andrew Bailey’s cousin and all the last eighteen years, it only takes two seconds to find her, for the woman crouching in a flowerbed by the left wall of the little garden is one he recognises.
The mane of frizz is tied up in a ponytail.
‘Hermione?’
In the second it takes her to turn around and straighten up, Ron realises two things: firstly, that this is not quite Hermione, and secondly, that this is because the girl in front of him can’t be more than eighteen.
‘I’m her daughter,’ the girl says, dropping the Muggle coin she’s just rescued from the flowerbed into her pocket and wiping her hands on her short denim skirt. ‘Are you looking for her?’
He blinks. ‘Her - her what?’ He clears his throat quickly. ‘Her daughter?’
‘Daphne,’ the girl says, eyeing him oddly.
Her voice is soft like northern water, Ron thinks.
‘My mum’s not here at the moment,’ she says with narrowed eyes. ‘Can I help you?’
‘Daphne?’
Her expression shifts slightly as pity creeps in amongst the suspicion. ‘Are you all right?’
Her accent swings haphazardly between cut-glass southern and a broad northern lilt. ‘Your -’ He shakes his head. ‘Your mum is Hermione?’
‘Er … yeah …’
‘Erm - where is she?’
‘France.’ She pauses doubtfully. ‘You’re not from her work, are you?’
She says it France like ass, not France like arse.
‘Um, Mister …?’
‘Oh, right, er - no, I’m not from her work. Or France.’ He clears his throat again. ‘Ron. I’m Ron.’
Her only response is a blink.
‘Has she ever mentioned me?’
Daphne shakes her head.
Great. Almost two decades and not one mention.
‘Um, er, Ron,’ she says hesitantly - ‘are you sure you’ve got the right person?’
‘Are we talking abou-is this where Hermione Granger lives?’
She stares at him for a moment as if weighing up what to tell him. Then, she nods. ‘Yeah.’
Despite himself, he can feel a grin breaking out on his face. ‘This is it? This is -’ He’s speaking too fast - probably faster than he has in years, but he doesn’t really care - ‘Hermione Jean Granger lives here?’
Bemused, she nods.
‘Hermione Jean Granger - the Hermione Granger who looks just like you?’
‘Yeah, I suppose so.’
But at the girl’s quiet puzzlement, he can feel his smile fading. ‘And … And you’re her daughter?’
She nods again.
This isn’t quite right, he thinks. He isn’t supposed to find this.
She still looks puzzled. And slightly worried.
‘I’m - I’m an old friend,’ he hastens to explain, rubbing his brow. ‘We haven’t spoken in a long time. I never even knew she’d had you.’
Daphne raises her eyebrows. ‘You must go way back, then.’
He is unable to answer.
‘Well …’ Daphne says, glancing back at her cottage, ‘she won’t be back till Tuesday, but I can tell her you came over … You could leave some contact details? Or you could just come back next week …’
‘I, er …’ The idea of leaving his contact details fills him with the kind of inappropriate hysteria he feels sometimes at funerals. A ludicrous image of a piece of parchment saying Ron Weasley - remember me? I’m living in London, let’s catch up sometime! appears before his eyes; he shakes it aside. ‘Sorry - where is she?’
‘The -’ She stops herself abruptly. ‘Here ...’ she starts, ‘where’d you go to school?’
‘Hogwarts,’ he says, a little baffled.
She relaxes visibly. ‘Oh, OK then,’ she says. ‘Wasn’t sure if you were one of us. She’s at the International Confederation of Wizards, in Versailles. That’s where she works.’
‘She works in France?’ She - Daphne - has to be at least fifteen, but - ‘She leaves you here all by yourself?’
Daphne eyes him with annoyance. ‘Well, I’m at Beauxbatons in the term, so it doesn’t matter then, and in the summer she usually tries to do most of her work from home. But sometimes she has to go in to work, and it’s easier if she stays at our flat in France. I can look after myself for a few days,’ she adds coolly.
‘Right - yeah, sorry, of course,’ he says as, all of a sudden, he remembers the evidence that sent him here. ‘So she is a politician, then? In France?’
‘Not really a politician …’ Daphne folds her arms and rests her hip against the garden wall. ‘She’s more one of the Confederation’s people. She works in policy and research. The magical creatures department. She’s a bit of a workaholic, that’s why she goes in all the time, like this week. And she’s - you know, she’s so noble about it,’ Daphne adds with an eye-roll. ‘There’s always something that needs doing, always some clause of some Estonian law from 1412 that needs fully understanding so everyone knows that in the medieval period it was accepted that house-elves wore one mitten and one sock on every third Tuesday of the month, or whatever. But, you know, it’s not just work, she’s like that about everything - she doesn’t trust anyone else to do anything the right way, she has to do it herself. Anyway,’ she says with a shrug. ‘She’s not an official “warlock” -’ She makes air-quotes with her fingers in the way teenagers have been doing since the dawn of time - ‘or a “mugwump” or whatever, but she’s hardly a secretary.’
Ron’s hand seeks the wooden post of the gate behind him, and finding it, he grips it tightly.
Eighteen years and one month after she left, he’s found her. He’s found Hermione Granger.
‘So, er,’ says Daphne, standing back up and shifting her weight from one fraying trainer-clad foot to the other. ‘How d’you know Mum?’
‘Oh,’ says Ron. ‘Er …’
‘Oh, let me guess!’ Her eyes narrow. ‘You’re not from her work - in fact you had no idea what her job is …’ She grins abruptly, places her palms on the low stone wall behind her and jumps up so that she’s sitting on it. ‘You’re an ex-boyfriend.’
‘Er - well, um, not rea-’
‘It makes sense.’ She looks at him steadily. ‘It’s the only explanation for why she wouldn’t have told you that she had a child.’
His stomach twists unpleasantly. ‘I … Um, well …’
‘Ha! I knew it. Have you come to seek a reconciliation?’ She raises her eyebrows and swings her legs. ‘She’s on the market, you know.’
‘Do you make a habit of setting your mother up?’
‘Course not; her life is her life.’ She grins again and folds her arms; Ron notices a dimple in her cheek like George’s and Charlie’s and Mum’s. ‘But the thing about being a poor, fatherless thing is that I can have a little bit of fun with her lovelife. So,’ she says, tucking a stray curl behind her ear, ‘when did you two go out, then?’
‘Oh, we didn’t really -’ He waves an arm around vaguely. ‘Y’know - it wasn’t really a case of -’
‘Yeah, yeah, whatever,’ she says. ‘When was it?’
He sighs. ‘Hogwarts.’
‘Yeah, that would make sense,’ agrees Daphne brightly. The chatty young woman in front of him is a marked difference to the guarded girl of five minutes ago. ‘How old were you?’
‘About eighteen,’ he mumbles. ‘Um -’
‘Ooh, did you know Harry Potter?’
Ron is sure he’s misheard her. ‘You what?’
She shrugs. ‘Well, Mum said she knew him vaguely, so …’
Vaguely? ‘Yeah, I, er, knew him,’ says Ron. Seriously, vaguely? ‘I mean …’ Hang on - that twat gets a mention and I get nothing? ‘What did your mum say about him?’
She shrugs again. ‘Oh, just that she vaguely knew him. I mean, they weren’t really friends, apparently, but still … it’s kind of cool.’
Ron is at a loss. ‘Yeah, cool.’
Daphne crosses her legs awkwardly.
Her body and face are remarkably like what Hermione once was, but her manner is very different; Ron thinks it must be the strangest experience he’s had in eighteen years. As she tucks a thick, coarse curl of hair behind her ear again, he notices her nails are short and bitten. A plain black vest joins the short denim skirt and the ratty trainers to complete her outfit; grey bra straps cut into slightly-freckled shoulders. Although she isn’t very tall, her arms and legs are pale and gangly, almost as if she’s still in the middle of an uncomfortable growth spurt - but that can’t be true because Ron is realising that she’s older than he thought.
‘So,’ he says, swallowing, ‘exactly how old are you, Daphne?’
‘Seventeen. I’m just going into my last year at Beauxbatons.’
He focuses his gaze on the cottage behind her and hears himself ask, ‘When are you eighteen?’
‘The thirtieth of March.’ Distantly, he can hear the grin in her voice. ‘Is it a particularly good age?’
And 30th March minus nine is 30th June, and 30th June plus two weeks is ...
‘Well, I’d - I’d best be off,’ he says croakily with a blink. ‘Thanks for … chatting to me …’
‘No problem,’ she says cheerfully. ‘Here, do you … Do you want to come in?’ She gestures back over her shoulder and shrugs. ‘I could make us a pot of tea.’
She’s friendly, thinks Ron. Friendly to strangers. But maybe it’s just a northern thing; maybe what they say about friendly northerners is actually true. Harry and Ginny’s kids would never invite a stranger in for tea. Then again, Harry and Ginny’s kids are liable to suspect even close relatives of secretly being journalists.
‘No,’ he says, turning away quickly, ducking under the crabapple tree and going through the gate, ‘no thanks, I’d best be off. Thanks, though.’
On the road, he turns back and takes a last look at the girl sitting on the garden wall. ‘You …’ He tries to smile. ‘You look very like her.’
She smiles in a long-suffering way Ron recognises from Harry at about the same age. ‘So I’ve been told.’
He swallows. ‘You’re very beautiful.’
Her face softens with surprise.
‘Well, I’ll be getting off then,’ he says. ‘Take care, all right?’
‘Sure you don’t want anything? A glass of water?’
‘No, thanks.’ He smiles again, but it hurts. ‘Thanks for, you know, talking to me.’ He looks up the road: it appears to be deserted. ‘Do you reckon I could get away with Apparating?’
‘Yeah, I’d say so.’
He looks at her. She shrugs. ‘Here, Daphne …’ he starts hesitantly.
‘Yeah?’
‘Don’t tell your mum I dropped by.’
She raises her eyebrows.
‘I - want to surprise her,’ he lies, feeling a bit sick.
She looks at him appraisingly and smiles. ‘All right.’
He takes a step along the road; then he turns back again. ‘Daphne, is there a reason you don’t go to Hogwarts?’
‘Dunno.’ She shrugs. ‘I don’t think my mum enjoyed it there much.’
He opens his mouth and shuts it again. He shrugs. ‘Fair enough.’
He turns to go. He can’t see this girl again, and so he knows, finally, that he’s never going to see Hermione again, but for the first time in his life, he’s all right with that. He doesn’t know what’s changed, but he suspects that it has to do with the fiery demand to know why having been quenched.
‘And anyway,’ adds Daphne, just as he’s about to go, ‘I’m not sure I’d be happy living in a place that’s run off slave labour.’
Ron stops. Then, he grins.
With a final check for Muggles, he takes his last look at the cottage and the defiant girl sitting on its garden wall. Then, with a pop, he’s gone.
It takes her until a good fifteen minutes after he’s left.
She’s filling up the kettle at the kitchen sink, glancing at the clock as she does so and thinking of how long she’s got until she’s got to meet Craig. She’s thinking of how Craig will think the story about the rather odd redhead called Ron is funny; how she’ll tell him about how he’s an old boyfriend of her mum’s who her mum hasn’t seen since before she was born; how he and her mum used to go out when they were eighteen -
With a gasp, it hits her, and she drops the kettle in the sink.
‘Fuck,’ she says.
Index || Part I || Part II || Part III || Part IV || Part V || Part VI || Part VII || Part VIII
It is completely written. I am currently going through and putting finishing touches to it, and am posting the chapters as I go (probably every few days). So it will definitely not be abandoned unfinished.
Feedback is always always appreciated. I really hope you enjoy it :)
Apple Crumble, Apple Tart (Ron/Hermione, 12+)
Author: akissinacrisis
I: The Cottage Up North
Six weeks after the end of the war, Hermione vanished without a trace. Eighteen years later, Ron goes looking for her and finds a little more than he’s bargained for: his child. What follows is the rapid unravelling of a long-kept secret over the course of a few hot days in August. Love, betrayal, Weasley family melodrama. Ron/Hermione. 12+. 8 chapters. EWE for Ron and Hermione.
Index || Part I || Part II || Part III || Part IV || Part V || Part VI || Part VII || Part VIII
Story notes: All book canon taken into account except for Ron and Hermione’s happily-ever-after as shown in the Deathly Hallows epilogue: in this story, Ron and Hermione did not stay together and get married after the war, and their children, Rose and Hugo, do not exist.
Personal notes: Big thank you to excitedrainbow for proof-reading and cheerleading ♥
APPLE CRUMBLE, APPLE TART
I
The Cottage Up North
The bus grinds to a violent halt and the doors fly open. ‘Here you are!’ shouts the bus driver. ‘Oi - you there! Ginger!’
‘What? Oh - right -’ says Ron with a start. Standing up, he hesitates for a second - do you tip Muggle bus drivers if you ask them to tell you which stop is yours? - but then he notices the glares from the other passengers at his indecision and he hops off as fast as he can.
Abandoned on the country road next to a lonely, rustic brick bus stop on the outskirts of a village called Ambleside, Ron watches the bus hurtle off over the hill and out of sight. He realises that in his dilemma over stupid Muggle customs he forgot to thank the driver.
Still, he’s on the right road. Supposedly. He is on a hillside: to the east, his right, is a high bank of long grass, covered with dark trees, trees that are thicker and darker than the ones that grow where he grew up in Devon. Further on ahead, there are a couple of precariously-balanced stone cottages, cut into the hill. To the west, his left, the hillside slopes down into the valley, where the almost too-picturesque village of Ambleside huddles around the tip of Lake Windermere.
His hands feel clammy: he wipes them on his corduroy trousers absently. He’s out of practice at this. He hasn’t gone on one of these little trips in three years, as George was kind enough to remind him this morning. George had let it be known that he was disappointed: disappointed that Ron was setting himself up for a fall again, when George had thought the trip three years ago was to be the very last one; disappointed that Ron was even doing this to himself - living in the past like this isn’t healthy, as, take it from George, George well knows; disappointed that Ron was listening to the gossip of the cousin of Andrew Bailey who runs the apothecary. Reliable though ‘You know, the French Ministry is full of Englishmen; when I was doing my research I saw all sorts of English names on the documents, Joneses and Grangers and Hopkirks and all sorts’ sounds, Ron - at which point Ron clapped George on the shoulder and told him he’d be back in an hour.
So here he is, having Apparated to the centre of the larger town of Windermere, where he’s been before, and having somehow managed to work the Muggle bus system - cautious, yes, but somehow it had felt necessary. Simple mistakes are easy to make on trips like this.
He pulls the scrap of parchment from his pocket. 4 Cranny Lane, Ambleside.
He glances up at the sign on the bus stop. Cranny Lane. This is it.
Stuffing the scrap of parchment back into his trouser pocket, he starts off down the road towards the nearest cottage. Despite George’s misgivings, Ron feels optimistic about today. He’s hoping that maybe the owners bought the house from a Granger (a female Granger, if he’s really lucky), or that maybe the previous owners did and the current ones have some knowledge of the house’s history. He shouldn’t get his hopes up too much, because old Andrew Bailey’s cousin never saw anyone at the French Ministry of Magic, just the name ‘Granger’ on a document - a five-year-old document. But the fact that when Bailey’s cousin asked around he was actually given an address for the Granger who signed the document is a good sign. Well, it’s good enough for Ron, who’s been looking for her for so long that he takes pretty much anything as a good sign.
The nearest cottage is number two: there is a large wooden ‘2’ on the gate. He keeps walking.
Today, he has high hopes: he’s hopeful that his policy of having given up the active search in favour of waiting for the evidence to come to him is finally going to pay off. The last time he went off on one of these investigations - sodding Romania it had led him to - was three years ago, and then he swore he’d never do it again. Well, not until someone came to him with information. Which, last week, someone had. And it was much more likely that Hermione had once lived in Ambleside than in Romania.
Well. That might not be true. She didn’t leave him any clues - there wasn’t even a note left, the day she vanished.
With a start, he realises that he’s reached the place he’s looking for. Number four. This is it.
He pushes at the wooden gate on which the old and cracked white paint is peeling off; it swings open noiselessly. Golden August sunlight illuminates the small front garden: withering roses sway as if breathed upon by the humid air, and a short tree, loaded with fat yellow crabapples, hangs over the path winding up to the small front door.
And after all that, the journey to Ambleside and the fuss with George and Andrew Bailey’s cousin and all the last eighteen years, it only takes two seconds to find her, for the woman crouching in a flowerbed by the left wall of the little garden is one he recognises.
The mane of frizz is tied up in a ponytail.
‘Hermione?’
In the second it takes her to turn around and straighten up, Ron realises two things: firstly, that this is not quite Hermione, and secondly, that this is because the girl in front of him can’t be more than eighteen.
‘I’m her daughter,’ the girl says, dropping the Muggle coin she’s just rescued from the flowerbed into her pocket and wiping her hands on her short denim skirt. ‘Are you looking for her?’
He blinks. ‘Her - her what?’ He clears his throat quickly. ‘Her daughter?’
‘Daphne,’ the girl says, eyeing him oddly.
Her voice is soft like northern water, Ron thinks.
‘My mum’s not here at the moment,’ she says with narrowed eyes. ‘Can I help you?’
‘Daphne?’
Her expression shifts slightly as pity creeps in amongst the suspicion. ‘Are you all right?’
Her accent swings haphazardly between cut-glass southern and a broad northern lilt. ‘Your -’ He shakes his head. ‘Your mum is Hermione?’
‘Er … yeah …’
‘Erm - where is she?’
‘France.’ She pauses doubtfully. ‘You’re not from her work, are you?’
She says it France like ass, not France like arse.
‘Um, Mister …?’
‘Oh, right, er - no, I’m not from her work. Or France.’ He clears his throat again. ‘Ron. I’m Ron.’
Her only response is a blink.
‘Has she ever mentioned me?’
Daphne shakes her head.
Great. Almost two decades and not one mention.
‘Um, er, Ron,’ she says hesitantly - ‘are you sure you’ve got the right person?’
‘Are we talking abou-is this where Hermione Granger lives?’
She stares at him for a moment as if weighing up what to tell him. Then, she nods. ‘Yeah.’
Despite himself, he can feel a grin breaking out on his face. ‘This is it? This is -’ He’s speaking too fast - probably faster than he has in years, but he doesn’t really care - ‘Hermione Jean Granger lives here?’
Bemused, she nods.
‘Hermione Jean Granger - the Hermione Granger who looks just like you?’
‘Yeah, I suppose so.’
But at the girl’s quiet puzzlement, he can feel his smile fading. ‘And … And you’re her daughter?’
She nods again.
This isn’t quite right, he thinks. He isn’t supposed to find this.
She still looks puzzled. And slightly worried.
‘I’m - I’m an old friend,’ he hastens to explain, rubbing his brow. ‘We haven’t spoken in a long time. I never even knew she’d had you.’
Daphne raises her eyebrows. ‘You must go way back, then.’
He is unable to answer.
‘Well …’ Daphne says, glancing back at her cottage, ‘she won’t be back till Tuesday, but I can tell her you came over … You could leave some contact details? Or you could just come back next week …’
‘I, er …’ The idea of leaving his contact details fills him with the kind of inappropriate hysteria he feels sometimes at funerals. A ludicrous image of a piece of parchment saying Ron Weasley - remember me? I’m living in London, let’s catch up sometime! appears before his eyes; he shakes it aside. ‘Sorry - where is she?’
‘The -’ She stops herself abruptly. ‘Here ...’ she starts, ‘where’d you go to school?’
‘Hogwarts,’ he says, a little baffled.
She relaxes visibly. ‘Oh, OK then,’ she says. ‘Wasn’t sure if you were one of us. She’s at the International Confederation of Wizards, in Versailles. That’s where she works.’
‘She works in France?’ She - Daphne - has to be at least fifteen, but - ‘She leaves you here all by yourself?’
Daphne eyes him with annoyance. ‘Well, I’m at Beauxbatons in the term, so it doesn’t matter then, and in the summer she usually tries to do most of her work from home. But sometimes she has to go in to work, and it’s easier if she stays at our flat in France. I can look after myself for a few days,’ she adds coolly.
‘Right - yeah, sorry, of course,’ he says as, all of a sudden, he remembers the evidence that sent him here. ‘So she is a politician, then? In France?’
‘Not really a politician …’ Daphne folds her arms and rests her hip against the garden wall. ‘She’s more one of the Confederation’s people. She works in policy and research. The magical creatures department. She’s a bit of a workaholic, that’s why she goes in all the time, like this week. And she’s - you know, she’s so noble about it,’ Daphne adds with an eye-roll. ‘There’s always something that needs doing, always some clause of some Estonian law from 1412 that needs fully understanding so everyone knows that in the medieval period it was accepted that house-elves wore one mitten and one sock on every third Tuesday of the month, or whatever. But, you know, it’s not just work, she’s like that about everything - she doesn’t trust anyone else to do anything the right way, she has to do it herself. Anyway,’ she says with a shrug. ‘She’s not an official “warlock” -’ She makes air-quotes with her fingers in the way teenagers have been doing since the dawn of time - ‘or a “mugwump” or whatever, but she’s hardly a secretary.’
Ron’s hand seeks the wooden post of the gate behind him, and finding it, he grips it tightly.
Eighteen years and one month after she left, he’s found her. He’s found Hermione Granger.
‘So, er,’ says Daphne, standing back up and shifting her weight from one fraying trainer-clad foot to the other. ‘How d’you know Mum?’
‘Oh,’ says Ron. ‘Er …’
‘Oh, let me guess!’ Her eyes narrow. ‘You’re not from her work - in fact you had no idea what her job is …’ She grins abruptly, places her palms on the low stone wall behind her and jumps up so that she’s sitting on it. ‘You’re an ex-boyfriend.’
‘Er - well, um, not rea-’
‘It makes sense.’ She looks at him steadily. ‘It’s the only explanation for why she wouldn’t have told you that she had a child.’
His stomach twists unpleasantly. ‘I … Um, well …’
‘Ha! I knew it. Have you come to seek a reconciliation?’ She raises her eyebrows and swings her legs. ‘She’s on the market, you know.’
‘Do you make a habit of setting your mother up?’
‘Course not; her life is her life.’ She grins again and folds her arms; Ron notices a dimple in her cheek like George’s and Charlie’s and Mum’s. ‘But the thing about being a poor, fatherless thing is that I can have a little bit of fun with her lovelife. So,’ she says, tucking a stray curl behind her ear, ‘when did you two go out, then?’
‘Oh, we didn’t really -’ He waves an arm around vaguely. ‘Y’know - it wasn’t really a case of -’
‘Yeah, yeah, whatever,’ she says. ‘When was it?’
He sighs. ‘Hogwarts.’
‘Yeah, that would make sense,’ agrees Daphne brightly. The chatty young woman in front of him is a marked difference to the guarded girl of five minutes ago. ‘How old were you?’
‘About eighteen,’ he mumbles. ‘Um -’
‘Ooh, did you know Harry Potter?’
Ron is sure he’s misheard her. ‘You what?’
She shrugs. ‘Well, Mum said she knew him vaguely, so …’
Vaguely? ‘Yeah, I, er, knew him,’ says Ron. Seriously, vaguely? ‘I mean …’ Hang on - that twat gets a mention and I get nothing? ‘What did your mum say about him?’
She shrugs again. ‘Oh, just that she vaguely knew him. I mean, they weren’t really friends, apparently, but still … it’s kind of cool.’
Ron is at a loss. ‘Yeah, cool.’
Daphne crosses her legs awkwardly.
Her body and face are remarkably like what Hermione once was, but her manner is very different; Ron thinks it must be the strangest experience he’s had in eighteen years. As she tucks a thick, coarse curl of hair behind her ear again, he notices her nails are short and bitten. A plain black vest joins the short denim skirt and the ratty trainers to complete her outfit; grey bra straps cut into slightly-freckled shoulders. Although she isn’t very tall, her arms and legs are pale and gangly, almost as if she’s still in the middle of an uncomfortable growth spurt - but that can’t be true because Ron is realising that she’s older than he thought.
‘So,’ he says, swallowing, ‘exactly how old are you, Daphne?’
‘Seventeen. I’m just going into my last year at Beauxbatons.’
He focuses his gaze on the cottage behind her and hears himself ask, ‘When are you eighteen?’
‘The thirtieth of March.’ Distantly, he can hear the grin in her voice. ‘Is it a particularly good age?’
And 30th March minus nine is 30th June, and 30th June plus two weeks is ...
‘Well, I’d - I’d best be off,’ he says croakily with a blink. ‘Thanks for … chatting to me …’
‘No problem,’ she says cheerfully. ‘Here, do you … Do you want to come in?’ She gestures back over her shoulder and shrugs. ‘I could make us a pot of tea.’
She’s friendly, thinks Ron. Friendly to strangers. But maybe it’s just a northern thing; maybe what they say about friendly northerners is actually true. Harry and Ginny’s kids would never invite a stranger in for tea. Then again, Harry and Ginny’s kids are liable to suspect even close relatives of secretly being journalists.
‘No,’ he says, turning away quickly, ducking under the crabapple tree and going through the gate, ‘no thanks, I’d best be off. Thanks, though.’
On the road, he turns back and takes a last look at the girl sitting on the garden wall. ‘You …’ He tries to smile. ‘You look very like her.’
She smiles in a long-suffering way Ron recognises from Harry at about the same age. ‘So I’ve been told.’
He swallows. ‘You’re very beautiful.’
Her face softens with surprise.
‘Well, I’ll be getting off then,’ he says. ‘Take care, all right?’
‘Sure you don’t want anything? A glass of water?’
‘No, thanks.’ He smiles again, but it hurts. ‘Thanks for, you know, talking to me.’ He looks up the road: it appears to be deserted. ‘Do you reckon I could get away with Apparating?’
‘Yeah, I’d say so.’
He looks at her. She shrugs. ‘Here, Daphne …’ he starts hesitantly.
‘Yeah?’
‘Don’t tell your mum I dropped by.’
She raises her eyebrows.
‘I - want to surprise her,’ he lies, feeling a bit sick.
She looks at him appraisingly and smiles. ‘All right.’
He takes a step along the road; then he turns back again. ‘Daphne, is there a reason you don’t go to Hogwarts?’
‘Dunno.’ She shrugs. ‘I don’t think my mum enjoyed it there much.’
He opens his mouth and shuts it again. He shrugs. ‘Fair enough.’
He turns to go. He can’t see this girl again, and so he knows, finally, that he’s never going to see Hermione again, but for the first time in his life, he’s all right with that. He doesn’t know what’s changed, but he suspects that it has to do with the fiery demand to know why having been quenched.
‘And anyway,’ adds Daphne, just as he’s about to go, ‘I’m not sure I’d be happy living in a place that’s run off slave labour.’
Ron stops. Then, he grins.
With a final check for Muggles, he takes his last look at the cottage and the defiant girl sitting on its garden wall. Then, with a pop, he’s gone.
It takes her until a good fifteen minutes after he’s left.
She’s filling up the kettle at the kitchen sink, glancing at the clock as she does so and thinking of how long she’s got until she’s got to meet Craig. She’s thinking of how Craig will think the story about the rather odd redhead called Ron is funny; how she’ll tell him about how he’s an old boyfriend of her mum’s who her mum hasn’t seen since before she was born; how he and her mum used to go out when they were eighteen -
With a gasp, it hits her, and she drops the kettle in the sink.
‘Fuck,’ she says.
Index || Part I || Part II || Part III || Part IV || Part V || Part VI || Part VII || Part VIII