A/N: Well, howdy folks! Long time. Guess what? This is the sequel to "Safe in Harbor"! This probably won't make any sense if you haven't read that one, so check it out if you haven't. Now this sequel has been very weird to write. Long before I even wrote the prologue, chunks of later chapters were floating around in my head and demanding to be jotted down. Now I have the whole thing plotted out, but you should see my organization notebook!
Now just a refresher: at the end of "SIH", Harry and Hermione had been married two years, Emerson was 3 years old and Ben was a newborn. This story begins nine years after SIH's epilogue - making Emerson twelve years old and Ben going on nine.
As I said above, I have the whole thing plotted out and about seven full chapters written and typed. A bit of the later chapters have already been written (in incomplete chunks, lol). I'll try to update as often as possible, but it won't be more than once a week, I don't think. Work is craaaaazy these days and real life just being very demanding, but I'll really try not to leave y'all in the lurch for unreasonable amounts of time. I do ask your patience, though.
As always, reviews are soo very welcome and much appreciated. Here's hoping y'all will like this one - fair warning, I won't be going easy on the angst. :)
Rock on!
Prologue
She had been doing fine.
Really, she had. Granted, things might not have been exactly the way she had fantasized that they would be when she was this age.
She was nearing forty and was single. Twice divorced. No children. No prospect of any either, at least not naturally. Ever. Not unless medical science, Wizarding or Muggle, effected some astronomically divine fertility breakthrough, which was incredibly doubtful.
Her job, initially such a source of fulfillment in more ways than one, seemed to have stalled. There were higher levels to be attained than where she currently was, but the concept of 'The Glass Ceiling' was still alive and thriving. That's what she got for staking out a career in the Muggle world, anyway. She was indispensable to her boss so long as she didn't get any illusions of grandeur and start thinking that she could be the boss. Oh, and everything was dandy so long as she dutifully held her legs open when he wanted her to.
And it was too late for a change now, too late to try to forge a new path for herself.
But she'd learned to accept that. She'd convinced herself that she was content. Who needs a husband anyway? He would just hold her back and she cherished her freedom. The freedom to bed whomever she wanted. The freedom to jump up and travel without really answering to anyone, since the travel was a part of her job. She loved being able to jet-set all over the world, whether with her job or by herself.
Ditto for children. They would likely drive her insane after a while. The women in her family didn't exactly have the best legacy for motherhood and she'd probably end up doing something drastic to the little brats. And what they would do to her figure! Lord, no. Her figure, her beauty was her passport to almost anything she wanted and she guarded it jealously. A child would surely take a toll on such priceless assets.
As for her job, the money was good and, well, let the boss think what he wanted. He thought he had the upper hand? Pfft! She could make him do anything. All she had to do was give him a certain look, bare a little thigh or cleavage, toss her head a certain way and he couldn't shoo the old farts on the almighty Board out the door fast enough. His mental capabilities would drastically diminish as his 'little head' took over, and with him reduced to a gibbering idiot, she could get anything from him. The keys to his private plane for the weekend. A blank check.
She would then skillfully convert the thrills of power this gave her into waves of ecstasy for herself that her boss, with his oversized ego, would smugly take credit for.
"I'm mighty good at everything I do, aren't I? And I mean everything." Nudge. Nudge. Wink. Wink.
Right you are, Sir Mr. Boss-Man Asshole.
Let him think what he wanted. He was just one more drone in her stable of slaves. Really, men were so predictable.
So yes, she was content. She was fine.
Until that day in August. Until that day when she bumped into someone so unlikely, so unexpected that she was forced to see through the façade she had erected around her mind. She was forced to see that everything she was or thought she was was a lie. And if not a lie, then dramatically inferior to the perfection staring her in the face.
Oh, how she loathed this! She had been free. She had gotten the last laugh. Wasn't she still healthy, still beautiful and desirable when that bitch had been lying helplessly in bed, pale, emaciated and near bald? Hadn't the satisfaction been sweeter than the honeycomb at the thought that never again would her men tear their eyes from her to goggle at that hussy? Hadn't she laughed as she'd done her last 'friendly duty' for the one who had stolen so much from her?
Hadn't she gotten the last laugh?!
Until that blasted day in August when her eyes had beheld what she was sure was the reincarnation of Julia Thomas, only younger, healthier, lovelier. She had stared open-mouthed at the avenging devil returned to torment her happy existence and the eventual knowledge that it wasn't Julia hadn't given her even the slightest bit of comfort. As far as she was concerned, this was Julia, except with astonishingly green eyes. This was Julia gazing upon her with that same mixture of pity and disdain. This was Julia, taunting her from beyond the grave: I win. Again.
And her eyes had been pried open to the reality of her life. To the reality that she was a barren forty year old woman, sleeping with her boss and a handful of other married men. Desperately trying to hold onto her beauty and relative youth because really, they were all she had left. Julia was dead but she had still won because she had this graceful imitation of herself walking the earth still.
It wasn't fair. It wasn't right. Why should one person receive all the blessings? Why should fate be so unjustly skewed in the favor of any one person?
Well, what do you do when you know something is wrong? You try to make it right, of course.
And that was what she was going to do. She would make this right. Let perfect Julia Thomas frolic happily in the stuck-up Paradise to which she had undoubtedly been carted on the snow-white wings of the archangel. Let her continue on in the delusion that she was loftier, holier, more sublime and desirable, even in death.
Because things were going to change. Why should the misery be dumped on one side, on one pair of shoulders? Sharing was a virtue, wasn't it, and when she was done sharing with the spawn of Julia Thomas - when she was done sharing with the daughter of Harry Potter - she will have accumulated so much virtue points that the friggin' Pope wouldn't have any choice but to canonize her.
But enough ranting. Must get to work. Lots to do.
Oh yes, lots to do.