Author's Note: I honestly didn't intend to write any more of this fic but the plot bunny bit and I listened.
Inspired by the "West Wing" promo and borrowing a line from "West Wing" that was the inspiration for this. So, this is a little cookie, of sorts, which takes place after "Loved I Not Honor More" and before "What Once Was Lost."
Missing You
"Do you remember that the first of the Season's matches is next Saturday?" Ron asked, coming into Hermione's study with his Quidditch bag on his back. "Can you come?"
Hermione looked up from the patient diagnostics she'd been analyzing with a slight frown. "Oh Ron, I'm sorry but I promised Elspeth and Stanley I'd spend the afternoon testing the new Potions we've developed."
"You can't reschedule? It's the first match and you know how important that is for how the rest of the Season goes."
"I know but I can't. We've been pushing off the testing for weeks now because first Elspeth got sick and then Stanley's children were in an accident and so I really can't ask them to reschedule again. We have to finish this."
"Why must you always--" Ron cut himself off, stopping his words with visible effort. "Never mind," he said curtly. "That's fine. I have to leave for training camp now; I'll be back on Thursday."
"Ok, I'll see you then."
"Right. Bye," Ron said briefly and left the room without giving her the customary kiss on the cheek or even another look. And a few seconds later, Hermione heard the sound as he Apparated away.
She attempted to return her attention to her work but found, after 15 minutes, that she hadn't read a word and gave it up for the moment.
She stood up, one hand going to massage the tense muscles of the back of her neck from being bent over her desk for so long.
She mentally replayed the conversation with Ron in her head, sighing as she did so. It was becoming more and more frequent, these little tiny spats that never blossomed into real arguments and were usually interrupted by one or the other of them and then brushed aside as if ignoring it would make the problem go away.
Of course it didn't.
Hermione felt-and could sense that Ron felt it too-the growing distance between them. Somehow, somewhere along the way, it seemed like their lives had become separate, parallel to each other without meeting anywhere in the middle anymore.
Admittedly she and Ron had never had too much in common but they had always before somehow managed to bridge the differences with the few things they did share. Now, with each of them getting busier, it didn't work.
Because, the main thing connecting her and Ron had always been… Harry…
She sighed again, her breath hitching slightly at the thought.
She tried not to think about Harry too much; thoughts of Harry almost inevitably led to sadness and regrets and disloyal thoughts about Ron and futile wishes and painful memories.
But it seemed whenever she and Ron had their little tiffs-which were becoming more and more frequent-the thought of Harry would intrude.
She sometimes wondered if she weren't simply idealizing Harry in her memory, building him up to be a paragon of understanding simply because he wasn't there-but then she would remember some of the things he had done and said over the years and she would know that she really wasn't.
It wasn't that she pictured Harry as being perfect. It was that she knew he'd always been more understanding of her. Harry had somehow always understood how important her work was to her, how important it was to her to feel like she was making a difference. He'd made allowances for it, for how she tended to get lost in her work and he knew when to let her be and when to gently force her to take a break.
Ron, on the other hand, only wished she could always take a break. He had never completely understood or sympathized with her love of her work, had always rather resented the attention she paid to her work for her own lack of attention to him (as he saw it). She knew Ron tried but he simply didn't get it sometimes. He had grown up with his mother as an example of what a wife and mother should be, completely engrossed in all things pertaining to her husband and her children and the household to the exclusion of just about everything else. And while he tried to understand that Hermione simply wasn't like that, in his mind, conscious or not, Hermione was always aware that he considered his mother to be the model wife and mother. And Hermione was increasingly aware these days that she could never be that.
She knew Ron cared about her, loved her still but she could sense on his part a growing and vague dissatisfaction that he was simply not the single most important thing in her life.
And she cared about Ron too, loved him as she always had, for how he could make her laugh, how he always seemed so untroubled, so willing to be happy (so unlike her)… She wished-with an almost desperate longing sometimes-that she could be more like Ron's model wife, but she knew she couldn't. She couldn't change herself like that, no matter how she tried, and to act like she could, would be false. She tried to reserve a certain amount of time for her to stay home but her timing didn't always work out with Ron's training schedule and so she would bring her work home with her-which wouldn't please Ron if he came home during those times.
She was failing, she sometimes thought, in her promise to make Ron happy-but to actually make Ron happy would require her becoming someone she wasn't. She hated knowing she was failing, though, as she had always hated failure.
And she missed Harry. At times like this, whenever she felt down over her and Ron, she always knew she missed Harry-not for love but for his friendship, the sympathetic ear to listen while she talked.
She was fond of Ginny and saw her as often as their schedules allowed; she got along well with her partners at St. Mungo's, Elspeth Bradders and Stanley Keyworth, and considered them to be good personal friends as well; but she couldn't talk about her worries and her troubles with any of them. Ginny was Ron's sister; Elspeth and Stanley didn't know Ron all that well.
There was no one she could talk to-except for Harry and Harry wasn't there, was Merlin only knew where. The Weasley clock at the Burrow which had had a hand for her and Harry added on to it always had Harry pointing at 'Traveling' so that was all she knew. (Admittedly, the clock only identified a very few select places as being 'Home' so she didn't know whether Harry had settled down anywhere but still, he was 'Traveling' somewhere.)
He never wrote-as she'd known he wouldn't-and Hermione irrationally found herself missing the owls which never came and which she didn't expect.
Almost of her own volition, her feet moved into her and Ron's bedroom where she stood looking down at her jewelry box.
Slowly, she opened the box to the small compartment at the very bottom of it and took out the necklace and locket Harry had given her for her 19th birthday. Inside the locket, wonderfully folded to make it fit, was a piece of parchment, which she took out and unfolded with slightly trembling fingers.
She read the two lines in it though she knew perfectly well what they said, could never forget.
Be happy, Hermione.
I love you-always.
It was the note he'd left her to say goodbye when he left which she had kept and put away.
She let out a long trembling sigh and slowly kissed the piece of parchment before folding it up and putting it back inside the locket, which she also kissed, and put back.
Oh Harry, she thought, wondering with a pang where he was, what he was doing, whether he thought of her often or sometimes or never, if you think I don't miss you every day…
~The End~
(Or not, as the actual story continues in 'What Once Was Lost'…)