Matter by Verity

“It makes sense it should hurt in this way - that my heart should break - my hands should shake- as if to say - surely don’t matter except in the most important way.” Poe, Fly Away

[Postscript to Switch IV.]

Hermione begins to eat again when she returns.

It feels strange not to feel hungry, and the weariness it seems she has always carried with her recedes a little bit. She stops taking the sleeping pills, and does not make her ritual pilgrimages to the club. One day at work she slips a slice of cantaloupe into her mouth and is surprised at the sweetness and flavor. She has not tasted anything in years.

She knows that her colleague Jack Stapleton is watching her out of the corner of his eye, wondering what happened in the mysterious week when she disappeared, and she does not care. Control, that precious commodity, is slipping from her tenuous grasp.

It is nearly a month before she knows - not much to a Muggle, perhaps, though as a witch she should have – but she’s not a witch any longer, is she?

In the office, typing up a report, she suddenly feels sick to her stomach in a terrifying familiar way.

"Jack?" she asks, sticking her head into the staff room on her way out, "Tell Devon I had something urgent come up, will you? I'm going home early." Somehow she manages to keep her voice from shaking.

"Sure," he answers her, taking a sip of his coffee. The courtesy in his tone barely covers the curiosity, but she takes her leave, walking down the hall.

A simple test confirms her suspicions.

She lies down on her bed and naps for hours, waking late to the setting sun. The last rays of its light turn her white room pale amber until, finally, dark sets in.

"I can't do it again," she murmurs to herself, thinking for some reason of Ginny. Once, when she was in her fourth year and Ginny her third, the younger girl had come to her and they had spoken of daydreamed futures, hers with Victor and Ginny's with Harry, and pledged their unborn children to eternal friendship and love. She does not know why this bittersweet memory comes to her now, three years into her exile and five years after Victor's death, but when she lifts her hand to rub her eyes, she discovers that her cheeks are wet with tears.

She touches a finger to them and licks the tip of it, tasting the salt and sorrow.

It is three more months before anyone at work notices, and she answers simply: I am fine, I am due in March. Devon kisses her on the cheek and congratulates her; Jack looks at her through narrowed eyes, as if to say, I can divine your secrets. You cannot lie to me.

When she is offered a promotion and a laboratory in a nicer section of London, to start the following summer, she accepts graciously. But her child is born in this hospital, the one in which she cured diseases and had her wrists sewn up, so many times. If the nurses who attend her recognize her or notice her lack of scar tissue, she does not know it.

The girl is small child, underweight a little, but her eyes are radiant coals, unlike the indeterminate milky blue of most babies.

She names her daughter Julia Livia Riddle, and Julia Livia Riddle does not protest.

"You will be," Hermione whispers, "All that I have ever lost. Won't you?"

His eyes stare at her from her daughter’s face; she looks away.