author's note: For the Wizard Trauma ficathon, second session, challenge 26 - Character A is sterile/infertile. How does this affect him/her and his/her relationship with Character B? Title taken from a line in Duran Duran's "Ordinary World".
It's raining. Somehow, that seems quite appropriate.
I know she's worried about me, worried about how I will react to the latest news. She found out when I hexed the telephone.
The conclusion from the Muggle doctor was just as unhelpful as the extremely discrete Wizarding Healer. The doctor made several suggestions, none of which I remember, to help Hermione and I.
"Harry?" Hermione calls from the doorway.
I don't pull my gaze from the dreary day out the window. "Yes?"
"I...I take it the news...wasn't good."
Scoffing, I turn. "You mean to confirm that it's my fault we can't have a baby? That it's not enough he took my childhood?"
When Hermione reaches for me, I hear her sigh. She's merely tolerating me. She thinks I'm a burden. I spin away, not wanting her pity.
She whispers my name.
"Leave me alone, Hermione." Her voice breaks on my name again. "Leave. Me. Alone." Each word is enunciated with such preciseness even I can feel their sharp edge.
I won't let her tears get to me.
I'm not surprised when she curses and Disapparates.
Somewhere in the back of my mind I know I should try to comfort her - that she's in just as much pain as I am - but I can't.
It's hard enough to have my worst fears confirmed: I will never father any children.
Hermione returns in the early hours of the morning. I haven't moved except to take a piss. She's startled when I turn the light on, flooding the room with harsh white.
"Dammit, Harry," she says softly.
"I am damned."
"I don't need your self-pity, Harry."
She thinks I'm pitying myself? Maybe I am. I think it's more of a mourning though, mourning for the child I'll never have.
The silence stretches between us until it's palpable, until it's a living, breathing elephant in the center of the room.
Neither of us acknowledges it.
"Good night, Harry," she says, turning on her heel and heading into our bedroom. Into the bedroom that will never be snuck into by a child with emerald green eyes and bushy hair. Into the bedroom where, for four years, we tried in vain to conceive a child.
I wonder where she went tonight.
The sun has barely risen when I sit on the edge of the bed. I've thought about this for a long time, probably since we first realized we might be having problems conceiving, not just bad luck.
I watch her for several minutes. She's beautiful. I think the first time I recognized that was fourth year. Ron may have only just realized she was a girl, but it was then that I knew she was beautiful. The years since have only matured that beauty. In sleep, the lines in her brow relax, the tense pinches around her eyes ease. I could look at her for hours, but it makes her think I'm a stalker so I never get the chance to just observe her.
"Hermione," I say softly. I want to get the inevitable over with, to get this done so we can move on.
She opens her eyes slowly. During the years we've been married, I've compared the color to melted chocolate, to a palomino's coat, to fallen leaves, but none have come close. I will never tire of looking at them.
"I've come to a decision," I say matter-of-factly though my heart is breaking.
Eyeing me in that assessing, analytical way she has - the one that unnerves me - she sits up.
"You have?" she asks, her voice sleep-husky. "All by yourself?"
Though I recognize the tone of voice - Ron and I heard it often enough in school - I have to finish what I planned to tell her.
"Since it's my fault, that's no reason you shouldn't have children. I - "
"Harry!"
" - think you and Ron should - "
She hexes me. I don't know where her wand was, but it's suddenly pointing at my face.
"Don't you dare suggest it, Harry," she growls.
Can't you see how much I hate this, Hermione? Can't you see that my heart is broken from condoning adultery with my best friend?
Tears seem to be warring with anger in her eyes.
Don't cry, Hermione.
"Don't you dare, Harry," she repeats.
I don't want to. Merlin knows I'm hating every second of this, but it's not fair to her to deny her a child merely because Voldemort's Avada Kedavra on a fifteen-month-old baby did kill one part of him. It's not fair to deny her children because I am incapable of fathering them.
"I'm not going...going to go fuck Ron because you're pitying yourself!"
Even if I could speak, I don't know if I'd say anything at the moment. I'm torn between admiring her spirit and hating her stubbornness. Doesn't she see this is the best way?
She glares at me for a moment, then slaps me. Hard. I saw it coming but let her do it. She needed to slap me and I deserve it.
"Get out, Harry." She lifts her hex. I don't move. "Didn't you hear me? Get out." Her words are more chilling for having been softly spoken.
I leave.
"Harry, you have your own house, why are you still here?" Ron asks over breakfast a week later.
His words echo in my head. I never thought I could drink for a straight week without consequences, but the headache I have this morning compares only to the times Voldemort possessed me.
"Hermione doesn't want me there," I mutter, shoving a forkful of eggs in my mouth. They taste like paper. Whether that's because I can't taste anything or because Ron cooked them, I don't know.
I feel Ron's eyes on me and look up. I don't know how to classify his expression and that worries me. Bewilderment, anger, frustration and worry are all there.
He leans back against the countertop and crosses his arms. Ah, he's going to be Auror Weasley now. With amusement, I note I'm being treated to the silent stare. This is one of the most potent weapons in his arsenal.
Bending my head, I tuck back into my paper breakfast. I can feel his eyes on me, though, boring into my head as if he stared hard enough the answers would be visible through the mess called my hair.
"It won't work, Ron," I mumble. He doesn't answer.
A crash from the front room signifies the arrival downstairs of Ron's wife, Tonks. The pain in my head intensifies from the metallic sound of a Dark detector clattering off a table and landing on the wooden floor.
"Good morning!" Tonks says brightly. I groan, making Ron laugh. The sound of a messy kiss between them eats away at my sanity. I miss my wife.
"Potter, what are you still doing here?" Tonks asks. I look over in time to see Ron catch a mug she hit with her elbow when she turned to face me. I'm amused when she gives her head a shake, changing the spiked pink hair she prefers to long, wavy black. When she's done, she glares at me. "Well?"
"Hermione's angry with me," I answer.
She snorts indelicately, making Ron grin. "She didn't look angry at lunch yesterday."
"You had lunch with her?"
Tonks glances at the clock, then curses. "Shit, I'm going to be late!" After a quick kiss for Ron, she Disapparates.
Ron turns his attention back to me. "We both had lunch with her. She doesn't look well."
Ashamed, I turn my attention back to my food. She should be relieved. Damn her for not doing what she's supposed to do. Again.
"What did you do to her, Harry?" Ron asks, sitting down across from me. In the corner of my eye, I see him stretch out his legs.
If only I'd been attracted to him, it wouldn't matter that I can't have children.
"Canthavechildren," I mumble around a mouthful of coffee.
Perhaps it's because Ron is so used to speaking with his mouth full, perhaps I spoke more clearly than I thought, but his legs disappear from my peripheral vision as he straightens. I feel his hand on my arm.
"All the tests came back?" he asks quietly.
I nod, not able to look at him.
"What did you say to Hermione?"
"I was a prat," I say.
"That goes without saying," Ron muses. "We're both prats. What did you say to her?"
I look up at my best friend. Though Hermione is also my best friend, there are times Ron is the one I turn to more than her, times I need him more than my wife.
"I told her she should get pregnant," I say quietly, willing him to understand.
He raises one eyebrow - neat trick, that - and comments, "But you can't make her pregnant."
I snort. Way to state the obvious, Ron. But I don't say that out loud. Instead, I explain, "I didn't say it should be me who gets her pregnant."
Both Ron's eyebrows shoot up into his hairline. "Who did you offer up?"
Though I hate myself for it, I feel a blush creep up my cheeks. "You."
He stares at me. This isn't the stare of Auror Weasley but just Ron, Ron the eleven-year-old I befriended on a train. I don't quite know how to interpret his stare, though.
"Me." Flatly stated, it's not a question.
Never have I been more uncomfortable in my own skin around Ron. Then again, I've never felt I was one step above being a bug around Ron, even when we fought about the Goblet.
I stand up, nearly knocking my chair to the ground. "I'll...I'll go."
He doesn't stop me.
I would have stayed at The Leaky Cauldron if I thought I could get away with it. But if news got around that Harry Potter wasn't living at home with his wife, both of us would be considered fair game. As it is, I think the general consensus if that I'm on a mission.
Not that I care.
My suite at the Savoy isn't cheap, but if I'm going to wallow in despair I want to do it in style. The maids have said nothing about the numerous bottles of Jack Daniels they find.
If only the empty bottles would make me forget the hurt and pain on Hermione's face then I could feel some resolution.
A pounding on the door disturbs me. Of course it disturbs you, you've got drunkenness on top of a hangover.
Stumbling off the bed and across the room, I undo the lock and yank the door open, ready to yell at the room service staff even though I didn't order room service.
I freeze with my mouth open. Hermione, looking almost as beautiful as she did on our wedding day, is standing there, her hand still raised to knock.
"May I come in?"
I blink, then shuffle out of the way. She sniffs once, her nose wrinkling in distaste, but says nothing about the unwashed smell.
She perches on the edge of the sofa, knees primly together, hands in her lap absently fingering her wand. After another look around the room, she meets my eyes.
I did that. I caused the pain there.
She takes a deep breath, distracting me with the rise and fall of her breasts, then says, "I talked to Ron. He says he hasn't talked to you in a week, since you told him what you said to me. I talked to Tonks as well. Surprisingly, she agreed to 'loan Ron out' if I wanted him." Her lips twitch momentarily with amusement. "Ron protested, saying he wasn't a horse to be put to stud."
Her eyes drop into her lap, where she's gripping her wand more tightly now, her knuckles almost white.
I sit on the floor. I don't want to fall down, which I might given the way the room is spinning.
"I've thought about this quite often in the last two weeks, Harry," she says softly, still staring at her lap. "I don't want Ron's children. I want yours."
"You can't have mine," I snarl, the alcohol fueling my sudden anger. "I can't have children."
When Hermione finally looks up, the heartbreak on her face rips into me more surely than any curse. "I...I...I thought we might adopt."
I hear the desolation in her voice more than the words. My selfishness has hurt her just as much as it hurt me. Adoption never crossed my mind, so focused was I on the fact my sperm are dead.
"Adopt?" I repeat softly, nearly choking on the words.
Something lights her eyes, restores some of the hope I'd ripped away. "There are war orphans, Harry, so many children without parents. We...I thought we could be their parents."
I regret drinking so many pints of Jack Daniels, mainly because it means I can't think clearly nor can I move to Hermione's side. Her earnestness shines through, lighting her face beatifically, and humbles me. I won't ask her for a sobering charm.
Finally, I answer her. "We could do that."