| Staring out the window of the vast jetliner, Hermione Granger contemplated her life. Tears unwillingly rolled down her cheeks. She touched the cool glass lightly, as if reaching for something she knew would never be there again. �B-But where are you?� �Hermione don�t be stupid,� his now malevolent voice seething through the phone. �If my clothes are gone out of the closet and my car isn�t in the garage after dark, put two and two together. I thought you were supposed to be smart.� �But, Jonathon� I just don�t understand�� �I�m not going to sit here and explain everything to you. I don�t have to, you�re not my burden anymore.� �Jonathon! The baby!� �You�re smart, you�re independent. Take care of it yourself.� �Jon! It�s our baby!� �Not anymore.� Pressing the heel of her hands to her gigantic brown eyes, she wiped the tears away like a two-year-old would do. In a matter of a few hours, she had lost everything. Everything that had been important to her was gone. She and her husband had just celebrated their tenth wedding anniversary the night before. She remembered smiling, laughing, and telling him that you weren�t supposed to celebrate tenth wedding anniversaries when you were twenty-nine. He had chuckled, murmured something about how adorable she was, and kissed her. But the soft tinkling of laughter and the cork of the champagne bottle softly made its way out of her mind as she continued to remember the events that had occurred not more than forty-eight hours before. �Hello, Cathy, is Jonathon in?� �Oh hello, Hermione. No, he isn�t, do you want me to give him a message?� Hermione frowned in confusion. �Um, no, that�s all right. Do you know where he�s run off to?� �No, he left at the normal time.� Hermione�s brow furrowed even more than before. �Are you sure, Cathy? I mean, he�s not home yet and I can�t think of anywhere else he�d be.� �I�m afraid I don�t know.� She�d been at work, silently going over test papers and essays when she�d gotten the sudden urge to talk to Jonathon. She had no idea where it came from, but out of nowhere it had sprung up and called to her like a wolf at the moon. Seeing as it was past five, he would probably have been home by then. Yet the phone rang and rang but there was no answer. She�d called his office, but his secretary had said he was gone. There were only so many places he could be. Now that she was worried to the core she sped home quickly. What if there was an accident? What if he had gone into a ditch out in the middle of nowhere? She didn�t even want to think about him not having survived a grisly accident. Not even thinking about where she was, she instinctively pulled out her wand, pointed it straight at the door and shouted, �Alohomora!� the door unlocked and she pushed it open. She had not checked the garage for his car. Instead, she flung herself into their vast master bedroom on the first floor. The sight was so eerie she could have screamed. Jonathon had never been a tidy man, and yet the entire of their bedroom was swept clean. No clothes lay on the floor, no crumpled socks were at the foot of the bed, and his normal stack of magazines had been swept off the nightstand. Something didn�t feel right. Her hands were now shaking and cold sweat was daring to seep through her hairline. What would she find if she opened the closet? A trembling hand dared to answer that question, and much to her dismay, the closet was empty. The realization hit her faster than a ton of bricks. Staring at the lonely wire hangers on the rack, she reached out her hand to touch one. She burst into tears before she could reach it, and fell on her knees to the floor. The phone rang in the distance four hours later. It was ten o�clock at night by this time, and Hermione was still in a cold empty house. Blinking back the tears in her eyes, Hermione recalled how icy Jonathon�s voice had sounded on the phone. He�d told her in not so many words that he wanted nothing to do with the institution of marriage anymore. He didn�t love her, he had never loved her, and he was sick and tired of being pulled between his life and her old life. Ever since Hermione could remember with Jonathon it had always been a struggle. He�d always somehow been morally opposed to the fact that she was a witch. After they had gotten into a tremendous fight while they were still courting, Jonathon reluctantly agreed to somehow overlook everything she did by way of magic as long as she didn�t rub his nose in it. She did him one better, she never performed magic in front of him at all unless the circumstances were extremely necessary. She had lived as a Muggle for years with her parents and after finding the freedom she had always wanted at Hogwarts, she was again denied her access when she had found someone to marry. Something, she thought at the time, was an okay thing to give up magic for. She couldn�t believe this was her Jonathon on the phone� her Jonathon. The man who had had her name spelled out in the sky as a way to get her to marry him. The man who always made it a point to wake her up before going to work every morning to kiss her so she wouldn�t worry. The man who on any unimportant day in her life would send her a different colored flower for every month he knew her. Jonathon Maybourne, the man she had loved, the man she had married� But what hurt more than the icy tone and empty closet was the fact that after ten years of trying, two miscarriages, and six months of excitement, he had so easily denied his parental status to their unborn child. �You take care of it, Hermione. You�re good at getting things on your own.� He�s calling the baby �it.� �Jonathon, it�s our baby�� �What did I just say Hermione? It�s yours now. I. Don�t. Want it.� �Excuse me, miss?� a soft voice rang over Hermione�s head. She whipped her head around and looked up, realizing she was on the plane, staring at one of the flight attendants. �Are you all right?� The young woman was going by on her way to deliver drinks and had seen Hermione sobbing against the window. How embarrassing. �I�ll be fine,� she muttered, wiping her eyes. �Here,� she offered, handing Hermione a small package of tissues. �Thanks,� she said as the attendant went to deliver the drinks. She opened the packet quickly, dabbing at her already red-rimmed eyes. As soon as she had gotten off the phone with Jonathon, she�d packed her things and booked the soonest flight out of Boston, Massachusetts. She needed to get home to England, where she belonged. Even though her father had passed five years ago, Hermione�s mother still had the house and had readily offered half of the place for Hermione to stay. Grateful that her mother hadn�t launched into her �I-told-you-so� lecture, she took the offer greatly and was now going back home. However going back home meant facing old ghosts. Ghosts of her Hogwarts past. And at that state in her life, she definitely was not ready to face those. She had to keep her return as subtle as possible. So after greeting her mum after getting off of the plane, gathering her things, and going home, she made no sudden move to talk to her mother about anything. Hermione only allowed her to rally about, making plans for the baby when it came in five months, getting excited and giddy that she was going to have a grandchild so close to him. Hermione smiled and went along with her, suppressing her growing excitement about becoming a mother only by her growing comprehension that her baby was not going to have a father. |
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| She'll lead you down a path There'll be tenderness in the air She'll let you come just far enough So you know she's really there |