The Past Returns

"The Past Returns"

By: FayeValentine00

I stepped away from the fire slowly, not daring to breathe. My whole body felt weak as I fought to grasp what I had just been told. It couldn't be true… it just couldn't. I watched as Ron's head disappeared before I allowed my legs to crumble beneath me. I hit the floor with a thud but didn't feel anything. My mind started spinning. Harry was gone, he'd said. Simply disappeared from the Ministry of Magic during a meeting. Harry had simply vanished and no one could find him.

As the first slow tear fell, horrible memories came rushing back from years ago. Memories I'd tried so hard to forget in order to move on with my life yet they always seemed to linger just below the surface of my subconscious. I remembered in our early years in Hogwarts, when Harry would fight Voldemort and then in the following years when Ron and I insisted on helping. I remember vividly the look in Harry's eyes near the end of our fifth year when I woke up in hospital to find him near tears. He told me he'd thought I'd died at one point and blamed himself. Even now the memory caused goosebumps. Then I remembered that last year. That last horrible year at Hogwarts when Voldemort had once again come for Harry and captured him. He'd gone missing for 2 months. Everyone thought he was dead but Ron and I. We'd both refused to give up hope. It was in those months that I'd realized that I was in love with Harry and the thought of losing him felt like someone was ripping the heart out of my chest. That was exactly how I felt right at that moment.

I suddenly felt a kick and my hand instinctively went to my belly where the child Harry and I had been preparing for grew. There was only two weeks left to my due date and the thought of having to go through this alone was terrifying. At 26, I'd never given up on my passion for learning and had been working as a teacher until about a month ago when I took a leave to get things ready for the baby. Harry and I had been married nearly 6 years now and our coming baby was the highlight of our lives. Harry was desperate to be a father and be there to raise it and watch it grow. We'd even waited to find out if it was a boy or a girl just to make the day all the more special. Having this child was something I wanted as much for myself as I wanted it for Harry. He deserved the chance to be the father his own father never had the chance to be and now he was gone.

All these thoughts raced through my mind in mere seconds before I heard a loud pop come from the kitchen. A moment later, I saw Ron walk into the room with the most concern I'd seen on his face since the last time this had happened. "I thought you might want some company," he said in a soft voice, pulling me off the floor and over to the couch where he hugged me tightly. It was exactly what I needed and for the first time in years, I completely broke down into uncontrolled sobs.

It was nearly 15 minutes later when I was finally cried out. No more tears would fall and I sat with my head on Ron's shoulder without a single coherent thought in my head. "I am so sorry, Hermione."

"I know, Ron. … Please tell me exactly what happened. I have to know everything," I asked, pulling myself away to look at him with what must been an expression of sheer desperation.

He took a deep breath and collected his thoughts for a moment, shifting himself into a more comfortable position before he said anything. His eyes looked glassy with unshed tears but his voice sounded steadier now then it ever had when we were children. "I don't know what to say. We were in the big meeting hall in the Ministry when Harry stood up to speak. The topic was on the activities of the former Death Eaters. Some people claimed that they were becoming more active and Harry was going to comment. He had just stood up to address the group when he vanished. … I mean, there is no way he could have apperated somewhere because that room is guarded from it yet he literally just disappeared. I tried to reach out and grab him, thinking someone had an invisibility cloak but it wasn't. Hermione, I swear to you I tired to find him but I couldn't. I'm so sorry."

When Ron finished, there were tears in his eyes and I could tell in a second that he blamed himself for not being able to save the friend that had saved us both so many times before. That moment of weakness for Ron broke my heart and I placed my hand over his and squeezed supportively. "Don’t worry. We got through this before and we can do it again." I did my best to sound more confident than I felt but I doubt it worked. "I'll be okay. Please don't worry about me. I have two doctors, remember? I have a wizard for the birthing but a Muggle doctor for the pregnancy part. Me and the baby will be just fine."

"Okay," he said softly, pushing hair from my face and forcing a smile. "I need to go help search but I promise to come and check in on you every few hours, ok?"

"I'll be fine, Ron. As long as Harry comes home safe, we'll both be just fine." Neither of us dare mention what might happen if he didn't come back safe and I wouldn't, no couldn't, allow myself to even consider the possibility.

"Alright then but I am at least sending Ginny and Neville over then."

"Okay…" Ron was just about to disapperate when I spoke up one more time. "Ron, do me a favor. Go home and give Luna and Susannah a kiss before you go out. I know Luna's going to worry but as long as she knows you're safe, it will be a lot easier on her."

A small smile spread across his lips as he thought of his wife and daughter and he smiled. "Okay. I will. I'll be back soon, 'Mione."

A moment later he was gone and once again I was left with just my thoughts and pictures full of memories hanging on the walls.

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That night I woke up in the pitch dark to sweat pouring down my face. I couldn't remember the dream I'd had but the heavy fear remained. Trying to fight off panic, I grabbed my wand off the nightstand and lit the room. My eyes darted from corner to corner looking for anything out of place but it was all as it should be except for one thing. The pillow on Harry's side of the bed was empty and I was shocked to realize just how big that bed felt without him in it with me. Without even thinking about it, I reached for the framed picture that'd always stayed right by the bed. It was a picture of Harry and I on our honeymoon. It was a Muggle picture.

Harry and I had a wizard-style wedding and it was wonderful. All of our pictures were scenes of the day rather than just stationary images but for our honeymoon, we went the Muggle route. Being raised Muggle, we knew how to function in the Muggle world and at least the media would leave us alone. In the Wizarding world, Harry was a hero but in the Muggle world, we were nothing more than young Mr. and Mrs. Potter. The picture I held was of Harry and I posing for the camera on the shores of Hawaii. The smile on his face was a special one I would never forget for as long as I lived. It was the smile he wore when I fell into his arms crying the moment he'd returned from his 2 month disappearance. It the smile he wore the first time I told him that I loved him. It was the smile he wore the day that he asked me to marry him, the day we were wed and best of all, the day I told him that he was going to be a father.

A part of me wanted to break down and cry as I had earlier in the day during Ron's visit but I knew I couldn't. There had to be an answer to where Harry was and sitting down and crying wasn't the answer. Forcing myself to be strong and think logically, I put the picture aside and tried to think about anything strange that had happened lately. There must have been some kind of sign or clue that would have warned Harry or I but what? Then a memory came back to be so suddenly that I made an audible gasp.

It had been nearly a month ago when Harry had woken up in the middle of the night and gotten out of bed. At first I'd thought he was just having trouble sleeping but I'd listened as he went into each and every room of our home and looked around. He didn't come to bed for nearly half an hour and when I asked him about it, he'd said he was fine. He'd just had a bit of a headache. The next day everything had seemed fine and Harry never mentioned it again so I'd assumed it was nothing. How could I have been so stupid? When he'd come back to bed, he'd kept a hand over his forehead tightly and every once in a while he would make a groan in his sleep. It hadn't even occurred to be until just now but what if it had been his scar aching? Is it possible that he wouldn't have told me? Is there even a possibility that all these years later, Voldemort could be back to his old tricks?

Just the thought of having those troubles again was enough to assure I'd get no more sleep that night so I climbed out of bed and pulled on a robe. I wanted so badly to go out and search for Harry myself that I nearly got dressed to leave but then I thought of the baby and stopped. I have to say that making the decision to stay home that night was one of the hardest decisions I have even made in my entire life but it was the right thing to do. Right now I was safe and no one had any clue where Harry was or what had happened. The chance of injury or worst was astronomically high and I knew Harry wouldn't want me doing anything to make a bad situation a hundred times worse. With a sigh, I sat down at the kitchen table and tried to figure out what good I could do.

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I heard a knock on the front door around 8:00am and was surprised to see Ginny with a covered plate that presumably held food from Mrs. Weasley and a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. "Good Morning, Hermione. Mom, sent Neville and the twins off to join in the search and sent me over here to keep an eye on you."

I couldn't help but smile realizing that Ginny seemed just as upset about being left out of the search as I did. I let her in and after a little bit of baby talk, the thought that lay most heavy on both our minds came to the surface. "Hermione? This isn’t right. Isn't this all supposed to be over now? Isn't this supposed to be the point in our lives where we get to reap the rewards for all the pain we've gone through?"

Ginny's sudden serious turn surprised me and I found myself looking into her watery eyes and seeing the girl that has grown up too quickly all those years ago. The woman I looked at had never been a weak person. From her first year at Hogwarts, she had been involved in the drama we'd all been through. No matter how hard Ron and his brothers had tried to keep Ginny out of danger, she was always right there with us whenever she could be but now things were different for all of us. It felt like we all had more to live for now. Ginny had been married to Neville for just shy of a year and she'd never seemed happier. Ron and Luna were married about 6 months after Harry and I but they got a quicker start on their family then we did. Susannah was already 10 months old! As for Harry and I, it seemed like every Wizard in Europe knew of the coming birth and it was the talk of the tabloids. Life had finally settled for everyone and now the return of unknown forces had turned the whole world upside down again.

I found myself just shaking my head at Ginny, I truly had no idea what to say for a few minutes before my thoughts got the better of me. All my frustrations came out in a rush of words. "Dammit, Ginny, I don't know what to do. I want to be out there looking for Harry more than anything. I want him home with me. I want him there when our baby is born. I want him here to hear it's first word, see it's first step and everything else baby's go through. If I just sit here and wait I think I'll go mad yet it I go out there and something happens to the baby, Harry would never forgive me and I would never forgive myself."

I didn't even realize I'd started crying until Ginny had wrapped her arms tightly around me and her tears blended with mine. "I can't lose him, Ginny. He has been my whole world since I will 11 years old. … What am I going to do if you lose him?"

"They'll find him. … They're going to find Harry and bring him home and things are going to go back to normal. Harry is going to get to be the father he has been talking about for the last 9 months and everything will work out. … It will, Hermione. … It has to."