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Hermione stood at the edge of a snow covered grave, the wind cutting through her. She didn't know what had drawn her here. She hadn't come the entire time her father had been dead, over a decade now. As far as she was concerned, his body was buried here, but he himself wasn't. It was hard to explain and yet.
Do not stand at my grave and weep
She huddled closer in her coat and cast a warming charm on herself, but with as cold as it was the northern winds blew the magic away before it did much good. And yet she continued to stand there, looking at the words "beloved husband and father" over and over again. They were true. She had loved her father as much as a daughter should. He'd been her co-conspirator in sweets heists, sugar free only of course, been the funny voices at bed time stories, taken her to football practice and dance lessons, cried at graduation after she had restored his memories and her mother's and had finally gone back to Hogwarts to finish up. He'd bought her her first grown up brief case for work. He'd taken her to dinner for every single promotion up until the cancer had taken him. She couldn't have loved him more.
But that didn't mean she understood why people came to grieve at graves. And yet here she was, half frozen to death already but something compelled her to stay.
I am not there. I do not sleep.
Perhaps it was because it had been a hard year, not professionally, professionally she had gotten re-elected to Minister in almost as big a landslide as the first, this term the opposition hadn't come up with near as good an opponent as they had her second term. But still the stress of running and also running the country had been more than the last time around. She was five years older, it did not help, but now it was more that. She found the country dangling on the edge of conflict again, though she didn't think anyone outside of politics truly knew how bad it might be. It had been time enough for the extremists to grow, it seemed.
It was almost Christmas now, the government closed for the holidays and she had more free time than usual. The last ten years she had used the time to catch up on work but this year she knew she had to take a break, to slow down, before she burned too bright and then snuffed out. And so she found herself here.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
"I won again," she said to the cold chunk of stone. "But you probably already knew that." She didn't know why she was speaking, but the words tumbled out one after the other. "She proposed at Yule. I know you weren't sure about her, being she was older and all, but I think if you'd been here all these years you'd like her now. Back then she was only just starting to be a friend. It was stop and start, she was still too prickly. But she isn't now." She paused for a moment and laughed. "Not to me anyway. Unless I've forgotten to take the bin out, which I think is fair. Mum used to get mad at you for the same thing."
She showed the stone the ring, pulling off her glove just for a few moments, for the sun to catch the stone, an emerald, the color of the ring around Narcissa’s pupils that almost no one saw, only seeing the lighter blue from far away. She shoved her glove back on as a gust of wind whipped the snow around her again and she shivered so hard she felt her muscles want to cramp.
"Of course it's Slytherin green almost too. I think she thinks I didn't notice that just because I said it looked like her eyes, but I did. I'm planning on buying her a ruby for her own band, I just have to find the right one. Then we'll be square."
I am the diamond glints on snow.
She tried another warming charm in-between the gusts of wind, and it worked enough that her teeth stopped chattering for the moment. "We're thinking of adopting," she blurted out like it was some sort of secret. "We're both a bit old, even for witches, for a baby. We've been thinking about a child just about to hit their teen years. Maybe a sibling pair if there are any in need of a home. Magical children orphans are a bit rarer than muggle, but I know as well as any that they still exist. Less now than when I graduated, at least but." She stayed silent for a long moment after that.
"I think about how you'd welcome them home," she said to the wind around her, looking up at the just barely blue of the winter sky. "You'd make them sugar free fudge, saying you really did get the recipe right this time so no one would know the difference. And then hand them a new electric toothbrush and toothpaste and floss. You'd take them out to dinner and tell them welcome to the family. They would think you’re irrevocably weird, but they would know you loved them already."
She felt tears stinging in her eyes, whether they were from the wind or emotion, she didn't know. No one else would know either.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
"Narcissa doesn't want a big wedding, I don't either. Mum is trying to convince me that it should be at least a bit bigger for relatives, but we want something with magic so I can't exactly invite great aunt Eunice." She laughed softly. "I know you'd be on my side since you hate great aunt Eunice, but also in general." She conjured herself a seat and sat down, waving her wand and forming the snow around her into walls sturdy enough to block most of the wind.
"We're thinking of a destination wedding to hush mum about that detail. Not hard for magical folk to show up on the Canary Islands, the Port key is two Sickles from London, a good bit harder for muggles. Narcissa wants something as different as possible from her last wedding. Considering it's to me, a muggleborn, I think it qualifies already, but I know what she means. A bit more casual is my style anyway." She stared off at the swirling snow and sighed a bit dreamily. "The thought of seeing her walk down the beach towards me in a white beachy dress of some sort just seems like it's own magic. I could be in a white linen suit. It would be perfect."
I am the gentle autumn rain.
"I…I'm sad, though, that you won't get to walk me down the aisle. I didn't know how much I wanted that until after Narcissa proposed and we were talking about a general outline for what we wanted. We were talking about places we would be happy to have the wedding and it hit me that you wouldn't be there out of the blue and I just had to take a moment. You haven’t been here in almost thirteen years, most days there's just a fond ache if I think of you, most days I don't even think what if. But that. That gave me pause."
She let that sit in the air for a good few moments, shoring up her walls and adding a roof and cloaking it with magic so it didn't seem too suspicious why there was a snow structure in the middle of a graveyard. With no wind coming from the sides, back, and above her she almost felt warm, though she knew that was mostly just a trick her body was trying to pull on her.
"Every little girl wants her dad to walk her down the aisle. If I had gotten married younger, when all the rest of my friends did, then I would've, we would've had that chance. I don't." She swallowed hard against the lump in her throat. "I don't regret waiting. Narcissa was worth the wait. But I just. There are what ifs everywhere I suppose, at least about this."
When you awaken in the morning's hush
"Mum's found a boyfriend in her retirement community. I don't mind him. He isn't my favorite, but he makes mum happy. Narcissa hates him enough for the both of us. She says he's a snake in the grass. He might be. Honestly I think he is, but for other people. Not mum. He acts different around her, uses that snake to fight for her. Reminds me more than a bit of Narcissa herself."
She dropped her voice to a whisper even though there was no one else to hear her in this place. "To be honest, though, it might make me love Narcissa that much more than she hates him. It isn't rational at all and I want mum to be as happy as she can, but there will always be a petty part of me that resents him. A 'he's not my real dad' as it were, even though I'm in my forties and he definitely wasn't trying to be that in the first place. I just. I just imagine what life would be like, sometimes, if you were there in his place."
That had her smiling. "There would be more toothbrushes in the office of the place and also you'd be searching for new arrivals to play cards with because everyone else would have figured out that you're a card shark and to play with you is to definitely lose money or snacks. Whatever you were playing for. It would be different. But not so very different. I think that may be what's so painful. All these things would've happened with you here just as without you. There was no real reason. There never is, I know, I know it better than most my age after everything, but…" She looked down at her gloved hands. "I just miss you. I suppose that's all it boils down to."
I am the swift uplifting rush
"After everything with Harry I know you're out there somewhere, somewhere beyond that train station, wherever it goes. I think it would only be fair that you can look in on us all from time to time at the very least. That thought helps, it does, but it doesn't fix everything. How can it fix everything? You were this huge presence in my life, in the world, and you're gone. Over a decade later and though the grief has faded it isn't gone. I'm here. I'm talking to the air, to a gravestone, who knows, maybe to nothing at all right now because this isn't one of those times where you can look in, I'm talking and I'm telling you everything I want you to know and I'm trying not to cry. It's been ages since I've had a bad day with this, and yet here we are. How do we recover from the weight of a missing person who was so integral to their being?"
She ran her gloved fingers through her hair and got so hopelessly tangled she slipped it out again. She'd deal with it later.
"There isn't an answer. People have been trying to answer that question for years. The answer always varies person to person. Believe me. I looked into it when you first died. I needed to know. All those deaths in the war. They hurt. I mourn them, but I was so young I'm not sure they really got to me the same way. But you. You're my dad. Maybe that makes all the difference. Not age. I don't know. For once I truly do not know."
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
There was a pop, distant, but unmistakable. Someone had apparated into the graveyard. Hermione had a decent idea of just who would be here now of all times. She turned towards the crunching of boots on snow to see Narcissa in her thick fur coat, trudging towards her, another thicker coat in her arms. Hermione widened her little shelter a bit, added another seat, and by the time her fiancee got there, there was room for them both to sit out of the wind.
"Put this on, that coat isn't meant for outdoor expeditions on the coldest day of the last decade," Narcissa said, voice curling into cold wisps on the wind.
Hermione didn't complain, grabbing up the coat and slipping it on, smelling Narcissa in the fabric, soothing her a bit more. "Thank you," she said quietly, and sat back down
Narcissa nodded and sat down beside her. They sat in silence for a while before her fiancee spoke again. "Have you told him about shutting down the latest wizengamot idiocy?" She asked.
Hermione grabbed Narcissa’s gloved had and brought it to her mouth, kissing the soft leather in lieu of her skin in this all consuming cold. She smiled softly at her love and shook her head. "Not yet, but it is a very good story."
"Of course it is, it involves you being terribly clever and also using some of that Slytherin cunning you swear up and down that you don't have."
Hermione rolled her eyes. They'd been going back and forth over this for years and yet. Secretly it had become one of her favorite bits but she couldn't exactly tell Narcissa that. She'd never hear the end of it, she was sure.
"If you say so." She stuck out her tongue for a moment and Narcissa cocked an eyebrow that said she would pay for that later, and she would like just how, but perhaps there would be a bit of work before that point. Hermione didn't mind at all. She just launched into the tale of the last month she'd been out manuvering yet another bone headed move from the Wizengamot, as the wind blew around them.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
The sun sank lower and lower in the sky as she told stories, half to Narcissa and half to her father, old memories and new. She talked until her throat hurt, but with that, when the final words crossed her lips, she felt a peace that she had not felt for a good portion of the year, a restlessness cured that she didn't even know she had. She looked over at Narcissa with such love and adoration, for being there, for prompting her, for helping her through it when the words were stuck in her throat. There was no one else on the world she would rather be with at the moment.
"I have my own story to add," Narcissa said, sensing that Hermione was done for the day, reaching out and squeezing her hand once more. "It's a moment I'm not even sure Hermione remembers, but it's indicative of just why I love her so. My son Draco, he is Hermione’s age if you remember, but he has a young son now, Scorpius, and he's a darling boy." Narcissa smiled softly. She loved being a grandmother and Scorpius adored her. Hermione was so happy for her, sometimes she felt like she could burst.
"I don't know if you remember Hermione punching Draco in their third year, but I most certainly do. When we were embarking on this journey together I worried. They had mended their fences a bit, there would be no more punching, of that, I was sure, but beyond that, I had no idea."
Hermione herself hadn't really known either. She was all for healing, but she wasn't about to do anything of the sort if Draco came at her with hostility. She would protect Narcissa and then herself if he had. And he had been hostile, for all of about two hours at their first dinner together as a "family" but then he had seen just how happy his mother was, and he had pulled back on the comments, not entirely, but it had certainly been a start and they had built from there.
"By the time that Draco had Scorpius, things had mended enough that there was civil conversation all the time, but it was stiff and stilted. It had stayed that way for a great while. The moment I knew that it would eventually soften further, was when Draco brought Scorpius over for an afternoon about two weeks after he was born, to give Astoria, his wife, a break for a bit, and to let me have some quality time as well. Hermione and Draco ended up alone together while I got lunch ready for all of us, and Scorpius had begun to cry and didn't show any signs of stopping. Draco as sleep frazzled as he was, had no idea what to do. Hermione took Scorpius from him, told him to lay down and sleep, and she would figure out what was wrong. She did. The floo trip had twisted his diaper just a bit and the squirming he'd done since had twisted it more. He was simply uncomfortable. She figured it out quickly, but she let him sleep until almost dinner time. When he woke she told him that he had a cute kid, and handed him back, and patted Draco on the shoulder. It wasn't much, but that gesture, I knew it would lead to more and indeed it did."
"Well we still aren't best friends."
"You never needed to be, just friendly is more than enough for me, darling. And don't think I don't know about your lunches together. He helps you plot."
He was a member of the Wizengamot. It was helpful. And alright yes they were friendly enough just to have lunch on their own. Draco was a clever man and fun to talk about magical theory with. So sue her.
Do not stand at my grave and cry;
Narcissa pulled her up. "You are done, yes?" She confirmed.
"I am." She felt lighter than she had in ages and so very, very tired, emotionally wrung out and more. She wanted a hot meal, a hot shower, and a warm bed, in that order. She might sleep for the entire week she had off, she felt.
"Good." She looped her arm through Hermione’s, paused for a moment while Hermione demolished their little shelter, and then apparated them home. "I have something for you." She said when they landed in their foyer.
"Oh?" I thought we were doing gifts tonight when Draco came over with Scorpius."
"We are, for the most part, this just seems rather too perfect considering." She summoned a package with bright green wrapping paper, with little moving brooms on it. Scorpius would absolutely go wild for it later in the day, she was sure. Narcissa handed it to her and waited.
"What could be perfect considering?" She asked, even as she started ripping at the paper. Her mind provided answers, but none of them were so fitting that she thought that Narcissa would pull them out of the pile to give to her early.
Nariccsa stayed silent, watching her rip the paper, letting it fall to the floor where it disappeared the moment it touched stone, enchanted such that it appeared in the garbage once it was used up.
Hermione tore off the last large bit to reveal a picture frame, upside down in her hands. She turned it over and saw a picture of her father, mid-laugh, smile wide. She swallowed hard and reached out, tracing his face. Oh. Well. That would definitely be why it was perfect considering. She looked closer at the picture. This was one from her ninth birthday she thought, where he had told a very lame dad joke and cracked himself up, and then laughed even harder as the kids groaned. Her mom had a decent collection of pictures from this birthday of her father, her favorite was her shoving cake into his face and the follow up shot of him returning the favor, the third being the both of them covered in icing and grinning from ear to ear, clearly laughing hard enough to make their bellies hurt. She had to wonder why Narcissa picked this one.
"I picked it because the smile," Narcissa answered the question on her face. "Because I see that smile on your face too when you're so amused. The same smile. You got it from him, I'm sure. I thought you should have a photo to remind you of that."
Hermione felt tears in the corners of her eyes. "Thank you, it's perfect."
Narcissa smiled gently and pulled Hermione into a hug, warm and sure and needed. "I'm glad you like it, darling. He'd be more than proud of you, he'd be ecstatic I'm sure."
"And he'd make that same dad joke every time he saw this photo. I'm sure." She laughed and shook her head. Of course he would. It was a Dad's duty he used to say. Maybe she would take that joke and use it for whatever child they adopted, to carry on the legacy as it were. She thought it was only fitting.
I am not there. I did not die.