Chapter 32

Fifteen Years Later

Hermione had not seen the Hogwarts Express in a very long time. The sight of it gave her pause. It brought back so many memories and now it was her son's turn to go to Hogwarts. She held his little hand tightly in one gloved hand and her daughter's in the other.

Both were gobsmacked with the noise and people. All the magical children gathered in one place, with their parents waving them goodbye. She stopped on a free piece of space on the platform and gathered her son to her. She wasn't sure how she felt about him leaving for Hogwarts. On one level it felt wrong to send off one's child. Luckily Florie, who was eight wouldn't be going for another few years.

"Now don't be scared, darling." She said to her son. "These years are going to be some great times that you will remember for the rest of your life. As soon as you get on the train, find the twins and let them show you around. If you need anything, ask Teddy." She hoped that the advice to seek out Ron's twins was good advice. Those boys had a gift for finding trouble.

Her little boy was growing up and he was itching to get on the train and depart on this next adventure of his life. Florie was dying of jealousy.

"Now are you sure you packed everything?" She said. She wanted to keep him there for a little while longer, but he was clearly wanting to get on the train.

"I've got everything, mum." He said. "I checked the list twice."

She adored her children. Michael and Florie Boot. She had married Terry Boot a couple of years after making the decision about what she wanted in life. Looking back, it was probably the first real decision she had made for herself. Prior to that, the course of action has been pretty clear or had just spontaneously developed.

She decided she wanted a good man and she found one. Not ideal or perfect in any way, but the up and coming mediwizard that Terry had turned into had impressed her. Their courtship had been textbook. They had dated and then married. Children soon followed.

And she had a good life. They lived in a town house in London in a good neighbourhood. Her career had flourished with her firm taking on increasingly important cases, moving more towards arguing specific points of law. Terry's interest in her cases waned when they became more abstract, but he still loved when she won something, he didn't particularly care what, but each time she won something, he would say "That's marvellous darling, let's celebrate."

Celebration, anniversary, birthdays or Valentine's Day would typically involve going out for dinner at a French restaurant, occasionally Italian, but Terry was very much a Francophile. He would do German at a stretch, but anything beyond that fell into the 'foreign' category.

They got on well. Had been married for nearly 13 years now. They never fought and they had sex once a week, which in many corners was a barometer of a successful marriage. It wasn't necessarily exciting sex, typically on Tuesdays, but they made a point of keeping that part of their marriage alive. They were both trying, which was good. He listened to her and the things she advised. Sometimes they would talk about politics, but mostly they talked about their children. He had good anecdotes from his work, but she had heard most of them a dozen times now from the various dinner parties they had thrown or been invited to.

And now one of their children had grown up and was leaving them. Hermione held back tears and busied herself by adjusting the hatpin that was failing to grip her hair properly, while she blinked back the offending tearing.

"Go on, darling." She said with a smile. "Give me a kiss, then you can go. I love you."

He obliged and she watched him rush off to board the train, disappearing into one of its compartments. She gripped tightly onto Florie's hand, while she prepared herself to leave.

"Time for ice-cream, I think." She said to Florie who was feeling left behind.

As she looked around a blond boy was saying goodbye to his mother. It was Scorpius, she realised. And the mother wasn't really his mother, it was the woman Malfoy had married just before she married Terry. Felicity was her name. She had light brown hair and blue eyes. She was pretty with a lovely smile.

"Now be good." The woman said to Scopius. "Do well in your studies and mind getting into detentions. Your father would be very disappointed if you were in trouble again."

"No he wouldn't." The teenage boy said. He must be just over fifteen.

"Yes, he would you cheeky money." The woman said with a smile. "Now give me a kiss."

"Uh, mum, you're embarrassing me." He said.

"And that is a mother's prerogative." She said. He gave her a quick peck while she hugged him. He bore it with embarrassment and then turned to escape to his friends.

He walked passed Hermione without paying her any heed. She watched the boy who would have been her son if she had made a different choice in life. She felt a mixture of emotions, most of which she didn't recognise or more likely, didn't want to examine.

She hadn't seen Draco in years. Rarely saw him at all as they travelled in vastly different circles. His wife turned to the blond girl who was his daughter for a goodbye cuddle. Her name was Delilah, Hermione had read of her birth in the Daily Prophet, and she was a year or two into her schooling already.

Hermione hadn't spoken to Draco after he made his ultimatum. It preyed on her mind at first but which each passing day, it seemed more and more distant. As Terry and the children came along, her life set its path. And she could not regret that. Her children were perfect and adorable. They were beautiful and clever, and the sole purpose of her life. Hermione had made a good effort to educate them to ensure that they would not turn up on their first day with the disadvantage that she had.

She squeezed Flories hand and turned towards the entrance into the muggle part of Kings Cross Station. Over the years she had grown to dislike the muggle world, particularly the public areas that were so loud and constant blaring demanding attention. She held the little hand in hers and dreaded the day she would have to say goodbye to both of her children. Because she would miss them both, but she also dreaded the probability that she and her husband would have precious little to talk about with the children gone.

Seeing Scorpius was disconcerting. She hadn't thought about him or his father in a long time. He looked so much like his father at that age although he seemed to prefer to keep his hair longer. He was a beautiful boy. She was glad there seemed to be affection between him and the woman who had mothered him, although his teenage mind naturally sought independence.

She was still adamant she had made the right decision and her precious children mean that would never truly be in doubt. But in rare instances she wondered what her life would have been like if she had made other choices.

She had a husband who never asked her to stop fighting. In fact he rarely asked for much at all, he went along with everything. He was what she specified, a stable, dependable and respectable husband. They had a good life, enough money to serve whatever they wanted to do, which typically meant a week in Paris each autumn, or redecorating rooms in the house.

Sometimes she wondered what she had paid for this life. She naturally cared for her husband and would never do anything to hurt or embarrass him, but she wasn't entirely sure if she would be crushed if he ran off with his secretary like Ron had. Not that he ever would, too dependable and his secretary was a complete nitwit. He never caused her grief in any way, never tested her. That was what she'd asked for. She remembered Draco had said something similar about his marriage, his first one, he got exactly what he bargained for and so did she.

She rarely thought of Draco, for some reason it still hurt. Not perhaps so much what he did to her, but more generally the whole outcome. And why dwell on things that hurt, particularly things you couldn't do anything about. While her decision back then was to walk away, she wasn't sure she realised how final that decision was. It seemed that opportunities for forgiveness expired like a use by date. And they don't necessarily come back. The current of your life takes you away and apart, and that is that really.

She knew that fundamentally, her rejection of him ran much deeper than the words he had wrapped his intentions around. Words are cheap. It was his intentions she rejected, or more like, she made her own intentions. Her time with him taught her a valuable lesson, one that was summed up by a quote she found some years later. "I am only responsible for my own heart, you offered yours up for the smashing, my darling. Only a fool would give out such a vital organ." — Anaïs Nin

The End