Chapter Text
Chapter One: Five Years
“The past is a black hole, cut into the present day like a wound, and if you come too close, you can get sucked in. You have to keep moving.”
- Severance, Ling Ma
Morning had always been Hermione’s favourite time of day. Especially in the summer, with the golden, buttery sunlight coming through her window, the world waking outside while she sipped her earl grey, the sounds of the birds and Edinburgh traffic coming into her flat. After putting together her breakfast of tea and toast, she made her way to the old wooden table pressed against the far wall in the small kitchen.
Hermione spread out her work alongside her food. She flipped through the planner, staring at the notes for all that was coming to ahead that week. There was a familiar clench in her chest from seeing one particular date written in her own writing. Overall, she thought she managed the pain of her past rather well—at least better than before. Yet there were still days where she felt the full weight of her emotions crushing her from the inside, and one of them was fast approaching.
She took a deep breath and continued with creating her daily to do list, forcing down the emotions that tried to surface. Pen in a death grip, she tried to focus and she needed to as it was shaping up to be another busy week. Between the shop and finishing up a project for her summer class. Then there was of course all of the usual chaos of her life. She reminded herself it was a good thing; that it would keep her mind off other things.
All she had to do was survive the next week, get past the date she dreaded, and it would be August. There would be a break from work and school. It would be wonderful; she’d finally relax... though she knew that was a lie. When had she ever been able to actually completely let go of anything?
Hermione put the pen down and buried her face in her hands.
Her anxious brain was racing ahead without her and she tried to remember the exercise from the mindfulness book Annie had insisted on lending her. That was her compromise for refusing to go to counselling. With her trademark bluntness, Annie had warned her over and over in her Scottish burr how the ‘bad feelings’ would keep trying to find a way out. Hermione was well aware of this, but it had been almost a year since her last panic attack. She had managed this far on her own. She would be fine. Even if her friend was often full of wise advice, Hermione knew that there was absolutely no way she would ever be able to actually talk to a therapist about her problems. Falling apart under the weight of her emotions was simply not an option. She worked hard to keep the trauma of her late teens sealed tight. There was no choice: she had to stay strong. She had to stay focused on what mattered most.
Her eyes dropped to her arm and she smiled at the sight of the inked flower. She ran her finger over the delicate purple iris, the dark leaves camouflaging the scar that marred the skin underneath.
“Mummy?”
As if summoned by her touch, the inspiration for her tattoo appeared in the doorway. Backlit by the sun, her daughter reminded her of an angel standing there in her white nightgown. Wild loose gold curls framed her face and the light dusting of freckles on her nose that became visible in the summer led the eye to her small mouth which was set in a frown. While her daughter physically resembled her, she did not share her love of early mornings.
Hermione opened her arms. “Good morning my love.”
Iris quickly made her way forward, tucking herself onto her mother’s lap. Her faithful stuffed companion, Prongs remained squeezed in one hand, while her other thumb hung in her mouth; it was a habit Hermione was attempting to break, but didn’t have the heart this early to redirect.
Hermione simply breathed in the scent of her daughter's hair and some of the long-carried anxiety rushed out of her. As long as she had Iris, Hermione had everything she needed, no matter how hard things could be.
The tangible weight of her daughter in her arms, the proof of how much she’d grown, didn’t stop her from struggling to believe that nearly five years had passed in this new life she’d created. One she hadn’t planned when she’d fled Hogwarts a few days after the final battle. Hermione had never intended to leave permanently when she escaped under the cover of darkness. She’d just needed time and space which she’d stated in the note left behind for her two closest friends. There had been promises to be in touch in the summer after she sorted some of her affairs, most importantly retrieving her parents from Australia.
Not that she’s succeeded. It had all been an unmitigated disaster. Unbeknownst to her, Hermione wasn’t exactly alone when she left the UK. It was not until a month later, when she couldn’t stop throwing up over a toilet bowl in Sydney, that she’d become suspicious that it wasn’t just nerves from being unable to reverse the memory charm on her parents that was causing her to feel so stressed and sick. It was confirmed in a weathered motel room; that life as she’d known it would never be the same.
Hermione kissed the top of Iris’s curls in her sunny kitchen, reminding herself that she wasn’t the lonely pregnant teenager that she’d been. While she failed to get her parents memory back, she had found her way as a parent herself. The two of them had a good life together, something she did her best to be grateful for, even in the hard and lonely moments.
She looked down at her daughter, whose green eyes were currently closed. This didn’t matter, she thought of him all the time regardless of if she was staring into the matching set of eyes that Iris shared with him.
Her last year in the magical world had consisted of a different us. Hermione had loved Harry since the moment he’d barged into the girls toilets to save her from a troll. For so many years she suppressed that truth, and had clung to the idea that her love was that only of a friend. She never expected it to be exposed in the middle of the wilderness while running across the country in search of a madman's broken soul.
Remembering that time in any kind of detail still brought her to tears. Those months had changed her, changed the course of her future in ways that she could never have imagined. None of it had been meant to be. A few stolen nights was all they all had and when Ron returned, all of it may as well have been erased. Except for the one night at Shell Cottage. Neither she nor Harry were certain they would survive the next week and the spark between them ignited once more on a chilled spring night in secret. The last time she would truly be alone with him before she left. Never in a million years did she expect it would result in the child she held in her arms.
Hermione pressed another kiss to Iris’s sweet smelling head, and she pulled Iris up so that they were at eye level .
“All right,” she said cheerily, “will it be cereal or scrambled eggs?”
Iris popped her thumb out of her mouth.
“Pancakes,” she replied intently. Her daughter was the queen of negotiations.
Hermione nodded thoughtfully, biting back a smile. “Well, we don’t have the ingredients for pancakes, but we do need to pick up some flour this week… Do you remember why?”
Iris furrowed her brow at the denial of pancakes before it clicked and instantly her entire face lit up. “Cake day!”
“Yes! Why don’t we make them on the first day of the summer holidays? But, in the meantime, we will make a cake for your half birthday.”
“How many days left before cake day, Mummy? And hols?!” Iris asked eagerly. Her tiny hands coming to Hermione’s cheeks.
Iris was clearly awake now and Hermione laughed. “Hmm, well today is Monday, and your half birthday is on Thursday, so that is only three sleeps left. And the summer holidays for both of us officially start the day after that, so only four sleeps.”
Iris threw her arms around her mother’s neck and gave a great squeal of delight. Hermione smiled wider, thinking there was nothing better in the entire world than the sound of her daughter's laughter.
--
After the usual morning rush to get out the door on time—amidst at least one short meltdown over hair brushing. Hermione managed to drop Iris off at the nursery school, and rush back towards their street where both the shop and their flat were stacked on top of one another.
The store had a dark red façade with gold lettering with the name MACKENZIE’S BOOKS stamped across the threshold. She had instantly fallen in love with it when she had walked through its doors almost five years ago.
Hermione breezed into her office located at the back, greeting Simon who had already started the process of organising the last shipment of books behind the counter.
“Oi. That small English bugger came by again,” Simon called to her.
Hermione sighed heavily. “Of course he did,” she muttered.
Xavier, a man in his late forties, always dressed in the same tattered blue blazer and insisted that she had a certain book somewhere in the store. He’d been plaguing her for weeks now. She was mostly annoyed, but it was Annie, her close friend and the owner of the shop, who was more on edge claiming she did not like “his aura”—whatever that meant. The book in question was another matter that Hermione didn’t want to dwell on that morning.
She moved swiftly through the store, and quickly stopped at the mythology section to put back a few books she’d been allowed to borrow for her research project. All these years later it was still her favourite spot in the overflowing shop.
Despite dealing with the occasional disgruntled or annoying customer or book seller, Hermione adored her work. It combined her love of reading, research and stories. It also gave her great pleasure to help families with ancestral research-something that reminded her of her father.
MacKenzie’s and its owner Annie had been her life raft when she had been drowning.
When she’d departed Australia, she had wanted to return to somewhere familiar. Scotland, with its familiar landscape, fit the bill. She found herself in Edinburgh, a city that was new but also familiar, where she could disappear into the crowd of locals and the hoards of summer tourists. Quickly she had rented a tiny and inexpensive flat over an old pub with her dwindling savings. It had been cramped and noisy, but silencing charms worked a treat. It was also only a few blocks from the Royal Mile and she’d spent that summer exploring the streets of Edinburgh until her feet ached, her internal monologue a constant barrage of anxiety and uncertainty.
As per usual, she sought solace in books, spending her days exploring bookstores and libraries. She took regular refuge in the Edinburgh Central Library, with its high ceilings and soft yellow walls, the wooden shelves with books towering above the myriad of wooden tables where one could sit and get lost in other worlds. She’d returned to the stories of her childhood, Greek and Celtic mythology, tragedies and triumphs, fairytale and folklore, Hermione had inhaled them. They had provided the perfect escape from the thoughts and decisions she wanted to avoid.
It was in these texts that she found what she would call the little one growing inside of her. Iris: the goddess of sea and sky. A name that held so much within it. The personification of the rainbow and its hope, Greek mythology, Shakespeare, and most importantly, a flower.
The war and its aftermath had taken things from her she would never get back, but it had given her a gift as well. Something that had been made clear the moment Iris was placed in her arms; her rainbow after a terrible storm.
As she’d explored the boulevard and alleyways of her newly adopted city, it had dawned on her just how much different it felt to be part of the Muggle world again. No signs of the horrific war she’d just been a part of could be found in the cobbled streets or marring the sandstone buildings. Carefree people strolled past her, and the heavy weight of her blood status lifted. The breezy Muggle atmosphere was liberating in its own way, and between the city sights and her frequent escape into books, Hermione could easily disconnect from the reality of her situation. Reality, however, had a way of returning.
For Hermione, it had been the looming date at the end of July: Harry’s eighteenth birthday. At that point it had been three months since she’d left Hogwarts and she was no closer to knowing what she should do. In all the time she’d known Harry, she’d never not acknowledged his birthday. It was during that week, while she’d struggled with what to do that she’d stumbled upon Mackenzie’s.
The shop had immediately drawn her in. A bell rang out when she’d entered, and she’d come face to face with the older woman who would become like another mother to her. Not that she’d known this at the time.
Annie had been sitting behind an ancient looking front desk, bent over some paperwork. When they’d made eye contact there had been nothing but kindness in her blue eyes. Their first meeting was short, with Hermione declining Annie’s offer of helping her find anything in particular, but she’d fallen head over heels for the old shop. It’s cramped aisles overflowing with books on every subject. And the mythology section had blown her mind, and on subsequent visits she would learn that Annie’s father, like her own, had a strong passion for old myths. That section, along with Annie’s enthusiasm and knowledge about stories is what had made her continue coming back. The friendship they developed was what had eventually rooted Hermione into her new life in the Muggle world.
Pulling herself back out of her thoughts, Hermione pushed open the door to the office and snuck her body through the narrow space. The addition of another desk for herself had made the room extra snug. Annie insisted they have two desks as she didn’t want to be anywhere near the “blasted machine” —her nickname for the computer Hermione had insisted they needed in order to bring the business of selling books into the 21st Century, not to mention help with the historical research they conducted for clients.
Hermione had only started doing more of the back-end stuff over the last two years, around the time Iris started at nursery full time and she had been accepted into the University of Edinburgh to study Ancient History and Mythology.
She spent the next couple of hours working away at the computer, tracking shipments, placing orders, doing the shop’s correspondence, and putting together a proposal for a client on why a site up in the Highlands may be connected to their ancestors. Her work was certainly never the same day to day. Moving around some of the piles of papers that always seemed to litter the office, she noticed the overdue invoices. She pushed down her annoyance at the clutter and madness that came with sharing an office space with Annie, and started on them immediately. She was about halfway through when the phone started to ring.
“Mackenzie’s Rare Books and Historical Research,”
“Did that buggering eejit come back in?” Hermione did her best to suppress a sigh.
“I don’t know,” she replied. “I'm currently buried under a pile of overdue invoices so haven’t gotten out to the floor today.” Hermione loved Annie, but didn’t always have patience for the older woman's paranoia.
“Oh you would know, always demanding to speak to you. Gives me the heebies. I don’t like it.”
“Well maybe he finds me more charming,” Hermione quipped, trying to deflect the conversation. She felt a pang of guilt that she hadn't shown Annie the book in question. She didn’t want to make a bigger deal out of the situation than was necessary.
“More of a lech than anything else. Harassing young women. I just don't like the look of him. But that's not the reason I called you Hen. Wait-” Hermione could hear Rosie, Annie’s sister in the background. “Yes Rosie—wants to know if we're still on for supper Wednesday?”
“Of course! Unless you’re too busy packing? We would love to see you both before you go. Also don’t forget that your itinerary is still in the office.”
“Aye I know, I'm in tomorrow. Finalised the rest today. We head to the airport bright and early Thursday.”
“Not sure if I’ll see you tomorrow, but if not I have left the notes on the Marshall file.”
“Ah thanks love! Don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“Drown in paperwork?”
Annie barked out her unique laugh. “Aye that is probably true. Tell the sprog I'm coming for her on Wednesday—” She heard more shouting in the background “Rosie has some new paints for her—”
“You're going to spoil her rotten.”
“That’s an auntie’s job isn’t it? Alright, best be off now. See you Wednesday.”
--
“One more story! Please mummy!” Iris begged, lower lip jutting out.
“Hmm love, we’ve already read two chapters tonight. I think that’s enough,” Hermione replied as she attempted to move off the bed but Iris reached out and tugged at her loose t-shirt.
“Please!” Iris begged, her green eyes wide to complete the puppy dog expression. “A short story.”
“These chapters are rather long—”
“Not Peter Pan!” she cried.
The two were on what felt like their hundredth go-around of the classic story which had become a favourite for Iris in the last year.
“Not Peter Pan?” Hermione asked, eyebrows raised.
“No, one of your stories,” Iris replied, her tone insistent. “Please!” she added as she saw her mother wavering.
Hermione sighed. “Alright, just a short one.”
Iris squealed happily next to Hermione on the mattress.
“A magic story!” she said, holding up her beloved crochet soft toy affectionately called Prongs. Though until recently it had been ‘Pwongs.’
It had been a gift from Annie’s sister, Rosie, who was quite the talented artist. She still recalled the shock when she had opened the gift-wrapped box to find a soft knitted brown fawn, the two sisters smiling at her. She had been speechless, as Rosie said that when she asked Annie, she said that a deer had come to her mind as the perfect companion for Iris.
Her daughter absolutely loved hearing about magic, the Marauders, the Golden Trio, castles and forbidden forests. When Iris had been an infant she had whispered these stories to her as she had rocked her to sleep—all the details, about her father and the adventures she had shared with him, as well as all the Marauders stories that she knew. As Iris got older she continued the stories but altered the details, taking herself and Harry out of the narrative, obscuring important details and for now letting her believe that magic was only make believe. Someday she would tell her everything, but for now her imaginary tales would have to be enough.
“Which one will it be?” Hermione asked, settling her daughter back under the covers which she’d flung off in her excitement.
“The Troll!”
Despite not knowing that it was about her mother and father this was still somehow her favourite. Her most requested was the Time Turner story, but Iris seemed to know that one was too long for tonight. Hermione dimmed the lamp, sat back on the small bed, and told her daughter the well-loved story: how a troll had been let loose in the dungeons of a magical school. How two brave boys, The Boy Who Lived and The King rescued the Brightest Witch (Hermione still disliked these nicknames, but found that she had used them without thinking). Iris always had a good laugh when the wand got shoved into the troll’s nose.
They were now lying side by side on the bed as Hermione finished the familiar tale. She stroked Iris’s hair that was spread out like a messy golden halo around her head, hoping her daughter would drift into sleep.
“Do they fall in love?” Iris whispered in the dim room.
“Who darling?”
“The Brightest Witch and The Boy Who Lived!” Iris exclaimed loudly.
Iris had become rather focused on the concept of true love over the last six months. Hermione blamed those ridiculous Disney films she was always watching at Annie and Rosie’s place. She could feel just how loaded this question could be, and she wasn’t sure if she had the energy to deal with it tonight.
“I'm not sure, my love. It is just a story. They are also quite a bit too young for love,” she said quietly, trying to keep the mood in the room conducive for sleep.
“Do they ever share a true love’s kiss when they grow up?” Iris’s voice had softened back down to a whisper.
Hermione wasn’t sure if she would ever be ready to share that part of the story with the girl in her arms. Yet she also couldn't bring herself to lie to her either.
“Well, we will just have to see. For tonight all I can say is that it’s very much time for bed and not stories.”
“Oh but Mummy—” Iris protested.
“All in good time my love, but for now, you will have to use your own imagination,” she said holding firm.
Iris pouted but seemed to relent, and Hermione gave a silent prayer of gratitude as she kissed her daughter goodnight and tucked her in one last time.
“I love you to the moon,” Hermione whispered into Iris’s hair.
“I love you to the bottom of the sea,” Iris whispered back.
Hermione turned off the light, made her way to the door, and was about to turn the handle when Iris called out.
“Mummy?”
“Yes love?”
Iris was just visible in the soft glow of the streetlight coming through the window.
“I think they fall in love.”
Hermione smiled softly. If only it were so simple.
“Have a good sleep.” Hermione let out the sigh she’d been holding in the moment she closed the door behind her, sagging against it.
All of her emotions were right at the surface, it happened without fail every year at the end of July. Probably why she’d spent half the day ruminating about her past. This also happened like clockwork when the cold mist descended on the city in autumn. Her grief flared at all of the important dates; it felt like she never got more than a couple months reprieve before the calendar would remind her of what had been, and of how much time had passed since.
Missing him was incredibly hard. And watching Iris grow up without a father was even harder. But knowing it had to be this way was the hardest of all. Yet, she couldn’t bring herself to regret what had transpired all those years ago. They had made her feel alive in a way she hadn't felt since. She also wouldn’t trade Iris for anything. Although she wished things could be different.
She pushed herself off the door and made her way through the flat, putting things back in their place as a way to distract herself from the images that threatened to burst through her consciousness. She even considered doing the ridiculous tapping exercise that Annie had shown her claiming it could calm her anxiety. Hermione’s preferred method was to aggressively push back a thought, or become so busy and occupied that there was no room left to think. At least until the emotions eventually overcame her and she froze her into an awful state...but she was getting better at avoiding this.
Although no matter how hard she pushed, certain memories or emotions always surfaced eventually. Over the years the acute panic and fear had mellowed, but another series of awful emotions had taken their place, grief and regret being at the forefront and the hardest to bear. There was no end to either emotion; they were ceaseless pools that she could drown in forever if she let herself.
When there was no longer anything to clean, she headed to the kitchen which doubled as her office at night. She knew sleep wouldn’t come early or easily, so she threw herself into her revisions and citations. Her project was so close to being finished. She was hopeful that by tomorrow it would only need minor edits. Getting lost in stories even of supposedly mythical creatures was preferable to her memories, or fighting the array of emotions that threatened to overtake her.
Hermione burned the midnight oil, only heading to bed when her eyes would barely stay open. She followed her usual routine, which included checking in on Iris who was tucked up tight in bed, before re-setting the wards around the flat—a habit she had never been able to break. Hermione readied herself for bed, then slipped under the covers. She sunk into the mattress completely exhausted. Mercifully she fell asleep relatively quickly, although her last conscious thought was of her best friend. His raven hair messy from her fingers. Unable to forget the feeling of his thin frame pressed up against her, his thumb brushing her cheek as he’d looked down at her with his emerald eyes darkened with desire. Right before he kissed her.